Louisiana, where in 1898, the state legislature had passed a constitutional amendment that carved out an ingenious loophole for white voters. Men who had voted before 1867—the year Reconstruction laws instituted universal suffrage—or whose fathers or grandfathers had voted before 1867 were exempted from the state’s poll tax and literacy test. White Louisiana legislators argued that their grandfather clause did not explicitly discriminate against blacks, because it applied to both races. But it punished only black men, of course, because the black vote did not exist before 1867.
