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 prior to 1867 and their descendants to vote. Of course, this excluded most black people. White voter registration officials also used “literacy tests” wherein potential voters had to read a portion of the state or national Constitution. Similarly,
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