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From late 19th-century legislation and constitutional amendments passed by a number of U.S. Southern states, which created new literacy and property restrictions on voting, but exempted those whose grandfathers had the right to vote before the American Civil War. The intent and effect of such rules was to prevent poor and illiterate African American former slaves and their descendants from voting, but without denying poor and illiterate whites the right to vote.
grandfather clause (plural grandfather clauses)
Many building codes include a grandfather clause exempting older buildings until some amount of remodeling occurs. 1910 October 27, “Grandfather's Clause”, in The New York Times[1], ISSN 0362-4331: The “grandfather clause” provides that no man whose grandfather could not vote, can exercise the right of franchise. It will thus disenfranchise many negroes, whose grandfathers were slaves. 1911, Frederic Jesup Stimson, chapter XVI, in Popular Law-making[2]: Under the Fifteenth Amendment there is little political legislation, except the effort in Southern States by educational or property qualifications, and most questionably by the so-called "grandfather clause," to exclude most negroes from the right of suffrage. 1981 December 17, “Santa Claus? No, Grandfather Clause”, in The New York Times[3], ISSN 0362-4331: The compromise that was finally struck will eliminate the minimum benefit for future retirees. But a “grandfather” clause allows the three million pensioners already receiving it to keep on getting it. 1992 January 18, “Undeserving 'Grandfathers'”, in The New York Times[4], ISSN 0362-4331: A grandfather clause will allow senior members retiring this year to transfer these funds to their personal bank accounts. 2013 October 22, Alan Greenblatt, “The Racial History Of The 'Grandfather Clause'”, in NPR.org[5]: In 1915, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Guinn v. United States that grandfather clauses were unconstitutional. The court in those days upheld any number of segregationist laws — and even in Guinn specified that literacy tests untethered from grandfather clauses were OK.
Grandfather clauses were statutes that many Southern states implemented in the 1890s and early 1900s to prevent Black Americans from voting. The statutes allowed any person who had been granted the right to vote before 1867 to continue voting without needing to take literacy tests, own property, or pay poll taxes. The name “grandfather clause” comes from the fact that the statute also applied to the descendants of anyone who had been granted the right to vote before 1867. Since most Black people in the U.S. were enslaved prior to the 1860s and did not have the right to vote, grandfather clauses prevented them from voting even after they had won their freedom. The 15th Amendment of the Constitution was ratified on February 3, 1870. This amendment stated that the “right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” In theory, this amendment gave Black people the right to vote. However, Black people had the right to vote in theory only. The Grandfather clause stripped them of their right to vote by requiring them to pay taxes, take literacy tests or constitutional quizzes, and overcome other barriers simply to cast a ballot. White Americans, on the other hand, could get around these requirements to vote if they or their relatives had already had the right to vote prior to 1867—in other words, they were "grandfathered in" by the clause. Southern states such as Louisiana, the first to institute the statutes, enacted grandfather clauses even though they knew these statutes violated the U.S. Constitution, so they put a time limit on them in hopes that they could register White voters and disenfranchise Black voters before the courts overturned the laws. Lawsuits can take years, and Southern lawmakers knew that most Black people could not afford to file lawsuits related to grandfather clauses. Grandfather clauses weren’t just about racism. They were also about limiting the political power of Black people, most of whom were loyal Republicans because of Abraham Lincoln. Most Southerners at the time were Democrats, later known as Dixiecrats, who had opposed Lincoln and the ending of enslavement. But grandfather clauses weren’t limited to Southern states and didn’t just target Black people. Northeast states like Massachusetts and Connecticut required voters to take literacy tests because they wanted to keep immigrants in the region from voting, since these newcomers tended to back Democrats during a time when the Northeast leaned Republican. Some of the South’s grandfather clauses may have even been based on a Massachusetts statute. Thanks to the NAACP, the civil rights group established in 1909, Oklahoma's grandfather clause faced a challenge in court. The organization urged a lawyer to fight the state’s grandfather clause, implemented in 1910. Oklahoma’s grandfather clause stated the following: “No person shall be registered as an elector of this state or be allowed to vote in any election held herein, unless he be able to read and write any section of the Constitution of the state of Oklahoma; but no person who was, on January 1, 1866, or any time prior thereto, entitled to vote under any form of government, or who at that time resided in some foreign nation, and no lineal descendant of such person, shall be denied the right to register and vote because of his inability to so read and write sections of such Constitution.” The clause gave White voters an unfair advantage since the grandfathers of Black voters had been enslaved prior to 1866 and were, thus, barred from voting. Moreover, enslaved people were typically forbidden to read, and illiteracy remained a problem (both in the White and Black communities) well after the institution was abolished. The U.S. Supreme Court decided unanimously in the 1915 case Guinn v. United States that grandfather clauses in Oklahoma and Maryland violated the constitutional rights of Black Americans. That’s because the 15th Amendment declared that U.S. citizens should have equal voting rights. The Supreme Court’s ruling meant that grandfather clauses in states such as Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Virginia were also overturned. Despite the high court’s finding that grandfather clauses were unconstitutional, Oklahoma and other states continued to pass laws that made it impossible for Black Americans to vote. The Oklahoma Legislature, for example, responded to the Supreme Court ruling by passing a new law that automatically registered the voters who’d been on the rolls when the grandfather clause was in effect. Anyone else, on the other hand, had only between April 30 and May 11, 1916, to sign up to vote or they would lose their voting rights forever. That Oklahoma law remained in effect until 1939 when the Supreme Court overturned it in Lane v. Wilson, finding that it infringed on the rights of voters outlined in the Constitution. Still, Black voters throughout the South faced huge barriers when they tried to vote. Even after passing a literacy test, paying a poll tax, or completing other hurdles, Black people could be punished for voting in other ways. After enslavement, large numbers of Black people in the South worked for White farm owners as tenant farmers or sharecroppers in exchange for a small cut of the profits from the crops grown. They also tended to live on the land they farmed, so voting as a sharecropper could mean not only losing one’s job but also being forced out of one’s home if the landowner opposed Black suffrage. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 eliminated many of the barriers that Black voters in the South encountered, such as poll taxes and literacy tests. The act also led to the federal government overseeing voter registration. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is credited with finally making the 15th Amendment a reality, but it still faces legal challenges like Shelby County v. Holder. However, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 did not protect Black voters from discrimination from landlords, employers, and other hateful people. In addition to potentially losing their employment and housing if they voted, Black Americans who engaged in this civic duty could find themselves targets of white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan. These groups terrorized Black communities with night rides during which they would burn crosses on lawns, set homes alight, or force their way into Black households to intimidate, brutalize, or lynch their targets. But courageous Black citizens exercised their right to vote, even if meant losing everything, including their lives.
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Who did the grandfather clause benefit?
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