Congress passed the Reconstruction Acts of 1867, ratified the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1870 providing the right to vote, and enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1875 forbidding racial segregation in accommodations. As a result, the presence of Federal occupation troops in the South assured black people the right to vote and elect their own political leaders. The Reconstruction amendments asserted the supremacy of the national state and the formal equality under the law of everyone within it. However, it did not prohibit segregation in schools.