The Lodge Bill, meanwhile, remained stranded in the Senate, and Democrats in the South had already begun erecting a firewall against further federal interventions. In the Senate debate over the Lodge Bill, Republicans repeatedly cited the new constitution Mississippi had adopted in 1890 as a glaring example of Southern repression. Mississippi imposed a poll tax and a literacy test, both designed to eliminate black voters who were overwhelmingly poor, disproportionately illiterate, and consigned to a segregated school system. Since the illiteracy rate in the South was higher than anywhere in
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