Did
You Know That?
The Fifteenth Amendment and
the state constitution of 1868
guaranteed voting rights to all male citizens. Therefore white
supremacist Democrats could not declare an outright ban on
voting by minorities. Instead, they secured passage of the
“Suffrage Amendment” to the state constitution
in 1900. It included a “grandfather clause” stating
that men whose lineal ancestors had the vote before January
1, 1867, could vote without passing a literacy test. The clause
in effect allowed illiterate white men to vote but denied
suffrage to the majority of men of color, most of whose ancestors
could not vote before 1867.
