One of the primary goals of the “redeemers” after the Civil War was to prevent black people from voting. Black voters were an especially formidable power in southern states where black people formed a majority such as South Carolina and Mississippi. To circumvent the Fifteenth Amendment, white officials, often former Confederate soldiers and slaveowners, instituted restrictions on voters like the poll tax. The poll tax charged people money to vote, money that black people and even some poor whites did not have. They also enacted the “grandfather clause,” which permitted people who could vote
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