All of these developments threatened to overturn Southern culture and social relations, which were based in white supremacy and racial hierarchy. The year 1865 included the Confederacy's defeat in the Civil War, widespread emancipation, and the abolition of slavery. The new Louisiana Constitution, however, created a poll tax, literacy and property-ownership requirements, and a complex voter registration form all designed and enforced to disproportionately disenfranchise Black male voters. At this time in the U.S., women of all races remained barred from voting, while Black men had recently gained the right to vote under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The political voice of African Americans was silenced.On May 12, 1898, the state of Louisiana adopted a new constitution with numerous restrictive provisions intended to exclude African American men from civic participation. Mississippi, South Carolina, Alabama, and Virginia soon enacted their own grandfather clauses. Thus, illiterate whites who could not pass a literacy test could vote meanwhile, the number of registered black voters in Louisiana dropped from nearly 45% in 1896 to 4.0% in 1900. Neither free people of color, even if they owned property, nor freedmen could vote before this date. The clause allowed a man to vote if his grandfather or father had voted prior to January 1, 1867. Amendments to the state constitution required would-be voters to be able to read and write English or his native tongue, or own property assessed at $300 or more. In 1896, in unabashed defiance of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, Louisiana passed the “Grandfather clause” in order to keep former slaves and their descendants from voting.
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