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A grandfather clause (or grandfather policy or grandfathering) is a provision in which an old rule continues to apply to some existing situations while a new rule will apply to all future cases. Those exempt from the new rule are said to have grandfather rights or acquired rights, or to have been grandfathered in. Frequently, the exemption is ...
The intent and effect of such rules was to prevent former African-American slaves and their descendants from voting but without denying poor and illiterate whites the right to vote. [1] Although these original grandfather clauses were eventually ruled unconstitutional, the terms grandfather clause and grandfather have been adapted to other uses.
Grandfather clauses were first instituted as a means of allowing whites to vote while simultaneously disenfranchising blacks. [2] The grandfather clause in Guinn v. United States involved requirement that a citizen must pass a literacy test in order to register to vote. At the time, many poor whites in the South were illiterate and would lose ...
Anderson, 238 U.S. 368 (1915), was a United States Supreme Court decision that held Maryland state officials liable for civil damages for enforcing a grandfather clause. Grandfather clauses exempted voters from requirements such as poll taxes and literacy tests if their grandfathers had been registered voters, and were largely designed to ...
Williams v. Mississippi, 170 U.S. 213 (1898), is a United States Supreme Court case that reviewed provisions of the 1890 Mississippi constitution and its statutes that set requirements for voter registration, including poll tax, literacy tests, the grandfather clause, and the requirement that only registered voters could serve on juries.
One of the new provisions held that any person registered before January 1, 1903, as most whites were, would thereafter be registered for life. That was a type of grandfather clause. Any person not registered at that time, as most blacks were not, would have to satisfy a number of requirements before being allowed to register.
[23] [24] Grandfather clauses temporarily permitted some illiterate white people to vote but gave no relief to most black people. Voter turnout dropped dramatically through the South as a result of these measures. In Louisiana, by 1900, black voters were reduced to 5,320 on the rolls, although they comprised the majority of the state's population.
Article One, Section 9, Clause 1 prevents Congress from passing any law that would restrict the importation of slaves into the United States prior to 1808, plus the fourth clause from that same section, which reiterates the Constitutional rule that direct taxes must be apportioned according to state populations. These clauses were explicitly ...