The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the federal government and each state from denying or abridging a citizen's right to vote "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." It was ratified on February 3, 1870, as the third and last of the Reconstruction Amendments.
The Twenty-fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution prohibits both Congress and the states from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax or other types of tax. The amendment was proposed by Congress to the states on August 27, 1962, and was ratified by the states on January 23, 1964.
Guinn v. 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 disenfranchising black voters.
A grandfather clause, also known as grandfather policy, grandfathering, or grandfathered in, 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 limited, as it may extend for a set time, or it may be lost under certain circumstances; for example, a grandfathered power plant might be exempt from new, more restrictive pollution laws, but the exception may be revoked and the new rules would apply if the plant were expanded. Often, such a provision is used as a compromise or out of practicality, to allow new rules to be enacted without upsetting a well-established logistical or political situation. This extends the idea of a rule not being retroactively applied.
Voting rights in the United States, specifically the enfranchisement and disenfranchisement of different groups, has been a moral and political issue throughout United States history.
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. In the US, between the 1850s and 1960s, literacy tests administered to voters had the effect of disenfranchising African Americans and other groups with diminished access to education. Other countries, notably Australia, as part of its White Australia policy, and South Africa adopted literacy tests either to exclude certain racialized groups from voting or to prevent them from immigrating.
Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649 (1944), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court with regard to voting rights and, by extension, racial desegregation. It overturned the Texas state law that authorized parties to set their internal rules, including the use of white primaries. The court ruled that it was unconstitutional for the state to delegate its authority over elections to parties in order to allow discrimination to be practiced. This ruling affected all other states where the party used the white primary rule.
Oregon v. Mitchell, 400 U.S. 112 (1970), was a U.S. Supreme Court case in which the states of Oregon, Texas, Arizona, and Idaho challenged the constitutionality of Sections 201, 202, and 302 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) Amendments of 1970 passed by the 91st United States Congress, and where John Mitchell was the respondent in his role as United States Attorney General. The Supreme Court ruled that the literacy test ban under Section 201, the minimum residency duration requirement for voter registration and the uniform rule for absentee voting in presidential elections under Section 202, and that Congress lowering the voting age in federal elections from 21 to 18 under Section 302 were all constitutional, but that Congress lowering the voting age in state and local elections from 21 to 18 under Section 302 was unconstitutional.
Giles v. Harris, 189 U.S. 475 (1903), was an early 20th-century United States Supreme Court case in which the Court upheld a state constitution's requirements for voter registration and qualifications. Although the plaintiff accused the state of discriminating in practice against black citizens, the Court found that the requirements applied to all citizens and refused to review the results "in practice," which it considered overseeing the state's process. As there was no stated intent in law to disenfranchise blacks, the Court upheld the state law.
The Lodge Bill of 1890, also referred to as the Federal Elections Bill or by critics as the Lodge Force Bill, was a proposed bill to ensure the security of elections for U.S. Representatives.
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. The plaintiff, Henry Williams, claimed that Mississippi’s voting laws were upheld with the intent to disenfranchise African Americans, thus violating the Fourteenth Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court did not find discrimination in the state's laws because, even though the laws made discrimination possible, the laws themselves did not discriminate against African Americans. The court found that any discrimination toward African Americans was performed by the administrative officers enforcing the law and that there was no judicial remedy for this kind of discrimination.
The Reconstruction Amendments, or the Civil War Amendments, are the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments to the United States Constitution, adopted between 1865 and 1870. The amendments were a part of the implementation of the Reconstruction of the American South which occurred after the war.
White primaries were primary elections held in the Southern United States in which only white voters were permitted to participate. Statewide white primaries were established by the state Democratic Party units or by state legislatures in South Carolina (1896), Florida (1902), Mississippi and Alabama, Texas (1905), Louisiana and Arkansas (1906), and Georgia (1900). Since winning the Democratic primary in the South almost always meant winning the general election, barring black and other minority voters meant they were in essence disenfranchised. Southern states also passed laws and constitutions with provisions to raise barriers to voter registration, completing disenfranchisement from 1890 to 1908 in all states of the former Confederacy.
Disfranchisement after the Reconstruction era in the United States, especially in the Southern United States, was based on a series of laws, new constitutions, and practices in the South that were deliberately used to prevent black citizens from registering to vote and voting. These measures were enacted by the former Confederate states at the turn of the 20th century. Efforts were also made in Maryland, Kentucky, and Oklahoma. Their actions were designed to thwart the objective of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1870, which prohibited states from depriving voters of their voting rights on the basis of race. The laws were frequently written in ways to be ostensibly non-racial on paper, but were implemented in ways that selectively suppressed black voters apart from other voters.
United States v. Reese, 92 U.S. 214 (1876), was a voting rights case in which the United States Supreme Court narrowly construed the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which provide that suffrage for citizens can not be restricted due to race, color or the individual having previously been a slave.
Guinn is both a surname and a given name. Notable people with the name include: Surname:
A poll tax is a tax of a fixed sum on every liable individual, without reference to income or resources. Although often associated with states of the former Confederate States of America, poll taxes were also in place in some northern and western states, including California, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Wisconsin. Poll taxes had been a major source of government funding among the colonies which formed the United States. Poll taxes made up from one-third to one-half of the tax revenue of colonial Massachusetts. Various privileges of citizenship, including voter registration or issuance of driving licenses and resident hunting and fishing licenses, were conditioned on payment of poll taxes to encourage the collection of this tax revenue. Property taxes assumed a larger share of tax revenues as land values rose when population increases encouraged settlement of the American West. Some western states found no need for poll tax requirements; but poll taxes and payment incentives remained in eastern states. Poll taxes became a tool of disenfranchisement in the South during Jim Crow, following the end of Reconstruction. This persisted until court action, following the ratification of the 24th Amendment in 1964, ended the practice.
Lane v. Wilson, 307 U.S. 268 (1939), was a United States Supreme Court case that found a 12-day one-time voter registration window to be discriminatory for black citizens and repugnant to the Fifteenth Amendment.
This is a timeline of voting rights in the United States, documenting when various groups in the country gained the right to vote or were disenfranchised.
The history of Black suffrage in the United States, or the right of African Americans to vote in elections, has had many advances and setbacks. Prior to the Civil War and the Reconstruction Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, some Black people in the United States had the right to vote, but this right was often abridged or taken away. After 1870, Black people were theoretically equal before the law, but in the period between the end of Reconstruction era and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 this was frequently infringed in practice.
