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United States, 238 U.S. 347 (1915), was a United States Supreme Court decision that found certain grandfather clause exemptions to literacy tests for voting rights to be unconstitutional. Though these grandfather clauses were superficially race-neutral, they were designed to protect the voting rights of illiterate white voters while ...
A literacy test assesses a person's literacy skills: their ability to read and write. Literacy tests have been administered by various governments, particularly to immigrants. Between the 1850s [1] and 1960s, literacy tests were used as an effective tool for disenfranchising African Americans in the Southern United States.
States also used grandfather clauses to enable illiterate whites who could not pass a literacy test to vote. It allowed a man to vote if his grandfather or father had voted before January 1, 1867; at that time, most African Americans had been slaves, while free people of color , even if property owners, and freedmen were ineligible to vote ...
[60] [61] Between 1890 and 1910, ten of the eleven former Confederate states, starting with Mississippi, passed new constitutions or amendments that effectively disenfranchised most blacks and tens of thousands of poor whites through a combination of poll taxes, literacy and comprehension tests, and residency and record-keeping requirements.
These laws, along with unfairly implemented literacy tests and extra-legal intimidation, [7] such as by the Ku Klux Klan, achieved the desired effect of disenfranchising Asian-American, Native American voters and poor whites as well, but in particular the poll tax was disproportionately directed at African-American voters.
As late as 1962, programs such as Operation Eagle Eye in Arizona attempted to stymie minority voting through literacy tests. [citation needed] The Twenty-fourth Amendment was ratified in 1964 to prohibit poll taxes as a condition of voter registration and voting in federal elections. Many states continued to use them in state elections as a ...
Case history; Prior: Appeal from the Supreme Court of North Carolina: Subsequent: Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibited use of literacy tests: Holding; A State may use a literacy test as a qualification for voters provided it is applied equally to all and is not intended to discriminate; it is part of its broad powers to determine the conditions under which the right of suffrage may be exercised.
[6] 1913. The Shoup Woman Suffrage bill is passed in 1913, giving women the right to vote in Alaska if they are considered United States citizens. [7] [8] March 21: The Shoup Suffrage bill is signed into law. [3] 1915. The Alaska Native Sisterhood (ANS) is formed. [6] Alaska Natives are allowed to vote if they give up "tribal customs and ...