Since then a majority
of the Southern states and practically all of the states of the "Black
Belt" have embodied either in their constitutions or laws provisions for
disfranchising the negro voter. Louisiana made the provision that a
person must be able to read and write or be a lineal descendant of some
person who voted prior to 1860. This is the famous "Grandfather Clause,"
which has since proved popular in a number of Southern states. While
these laws and constitutional provisions have evidently been designed to
disfranchise the negro voter, the Federal Supreme Court has upheld them
in spite of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution.
Regarding all of this legislation it may be said that it has had perhaps
both good and bad effects. In so far as it has tended to eliminate the
negro from politics this has been a good effect, but it has oftentimes
rather succeeded in keeping the negro question in politics; and the
evident injustice and inequality of some of the laws must, it would
seem, react to lower the whole tone of political morality in the South.
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