Grandfather clauses
Grandfather clauses are provisions that allowed individuals to bypass certain voting qualifications based on their ancestors' voting status. Established in the post-Civil War era, particularly during the Reconstruction period, these clauses emerged as a means for white southerners to circumvent the voting rights guaranteed by the Fifteenth Amendment, which aimed to ensure that all citizens, regardless of race, could vote. Specifically, grandfather clauses stipulated that individuals could only vote if their grandfathers had been eligible to vote before the Civil War, effectively disenfranchising many African Americans whose ancestors had been enslaved and denied the right to vote.
Seven southern states adopted these clauses, often in conjunction with other discriminatory practices like poll taxes and literacy tests, which collectively upheld racial segregation and disenfranchisement. The use of grandfather clauses contributed significantly to the systemic suppression of African American voters in the South for many decades. However, the U.S. Supreme Court deemed these clauses unconstitutional in 1915, marking a significant legal challenge against such discriminatory practices. Understanding grandfather clauses is essential for grasping the complexities of voting rights history in the United States and the ongoing struggles against racial discrimination.
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Grandfather clauses
After the Civil War (1861-1865), the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteed the voting rights of people of color in southern states. It expressly stated that the right to vote could not be “denied or abridged . . . on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” During the period of Reconstruction (1863-1877), the military administration in charge of the former Confederate states enforced this prescription. When Reconstruction ended, and the civil authority of these states replaced the federal military administration, white southerners devised various methods of circumventing the Fifteenth Amendment. One of these methods was the grandfather clause.
Grandfather clauses based eligibility to vote on the capacity of one’s grandfather to vote. Of course, the grandfathers of the vast majority of African Americans in the South had been slaves and therefore had never been allowed to vote. Seven southern states incorporated such a clause into their state constitutions. Along with poll taxes, literacy tests, and other so-called Jim Crow measures, grandfather clauses effectively prohibited African Americans from voting for several decades. In 1915, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the grandfather clause to be an unconstitutional qualification for voting.
Bibliography
Greenblatt, Alan. "The Racial History of the 'Grandfather Clause.'" Code Switch. NPR, 22 Oct. 2013. Web. 27 Apr. 2015.
Riser, R. Volney. Defying Disfranchisement: Black Voting Rights Activism in the Jim Crow South, 1890-1908. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2010. Print.
Sabato, Larry, and Howard R. Ernst. Encyclopedia of American Political Parties and Elections. 2nd ed. New York: Facts On File, 2014. Print.
Shay, Alison. "Remembering Guinn v. United States." Publishing the Long Civil Rights Movement. Special Collections Lib., U of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 21 June 2012. Web. 27 Apr. 2015.
Stephenson, D. Grier. The Right to Vote : Rights and Liberties under the Law. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2004. Print.