legality.

The first steps were taken by Mississippi in 1890. The new state
constitution of that year required as prerequisite to the voting
privilege, the payment of all taxes which were legally demanded of the
citizen during the two preceding years--a provision to which no
constitutional exception could be taken, and which effectively debarred
large numbers of colored voters. Further, it provided that after January
1, 1892, every voter must be able to read any section of the state
constitution or be able to give an interpretation of it _when read to
him_. As the election officials who would judge the ability of the
applicant properly to interpret the constitution would certainly be
whites, it was clear that the ignorant black would have scant chance of
passing the educational test. Several other states followed in the wake
of Mississippi, until in 1898 Louisiana discovered a new barrier through
which only whites might make their way to the voting lists. This was the
famous "grandfather clause." In brief, it allowed citizens to vote who
had that right before January 1, 1867, together with the descendants of
such citizens, regardless of their educational and property
qualifications. As no negroes had voted in the state before that date,
they were effectively debarred. Under the influence of such pressure,
the negro vote promptly dwindled away to negligible proportions. In
Louisiana, to cite one case, there were 127,263 registered colored
voters in 1896, and 5,354 in 1900. Between these two years the new state
constitution had been passed. In 1915 the Supreme Court finally declared
a grandfather clause unconstitutional on the ground that its only
possible intention was to evade that provision of the Fifteenth
Amendment which forbids the states to abridge, on account of color, the
rights of citizens of the United States to vote.