"Keep the Blacks from Voting"

The Fifteenth Amendment, adopted in 1870, said that "the rights of citizens in the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United
States or by any state on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude."

Reading these words, one would assume that they gave Blacks the right to vote. That is NOT what the Supreme Court during the 1870's thought they meant. By a series of decisions, it held that the Fifteenth Amendment did no necessarily confer the right to vote on anybody; it merely asserted that if someone was denied that right, the denial could not be explicitly based on the grounds of race. And the burden of proving that it was race that led to the denial fell on the black who was turned away at the polls.

This interpretation opened the door to all manner of state stratagems to keep blacks from voting. One was a literacy test (a large proportion of former slaves were illiterate): another was a requirement that a poll tax be paid (former slaves were poor): a third was the practice of keeping blacks from voting in primary elections.

To allow whites who were illiterate or poor to vote, a grandfather clause was added to the law, saying that a person could vote, even if he did not meet the legal requirements, if his ancestors voted before 1867 (blacks of course could not vote before 1867). When all else failed, blacks were intimidated, threatened, or harassed if they showed up at the polls.

American Government, The Essentials
James Q. Wilson & John J. Dilulio, Jr.
10th Edition

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