To further ensure that literacy tests did not disenfranchise existing white voters, a grandfather clause exempted from the test all those whose grandfathers could vote. This included most whites and no blacks. Would the Lodge Bill change any of this? The bill’s advocates admitted it would not. It would protect only those already registered to vote from fraud and violence in federal elections. White Southerners were institutionalizing racial inequality, making fraud and violence less necessary, and the Supreme Court would validate their efforts in Williams v. Mississippi in 1898.
