The Grandfather Clause

Racist non voting conditions

The Grandfather Clause was sanctioned by seven southern states during and after the reconstruction era to haul freedmen from voting. The clauses purpose was to refute the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which did not allow black men to vote; knowingly it negated African American political contribution into the 20th Century. Louisiana in 1898 had laws that swam their way into regulations and constituents by 1910, the Grandfather Clause specified that all men or lineage of men who were voters before 1867 did not have to come across the educational, property, or taxes for voting then in existence. This successfully permitted all white males to vote although repudiating the license to black men and other men of color.  The Grandfather Clause, with its voting rejections, was the centerfold of a much bigger scheme of discrimination and racial segregation. While in concept standards were set state-wide to record procedures, but in actuality the different county Registrars and assistants operated in their own manner. The careful process mixed from county to county, and within a county it speckled from day to day rendering to the disposition of the Registrar. And, of course, it almost continuously diverted according to the race of the candidate. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909 assembled the first lawful test to the Grandfather Clause. Guinn v. United States, a case which prolong to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1915.  The Court reigned that Grandfather Clauses in Maryland and Oklahoma were worthless and annulled because they dishonoured the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution