Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America

by Michael Harriot

I know you think I’m finna tell you about poll taxes and literacy tests. Nah, bruh. They thought of all the white things to further suppress the Black population. The constitution used taxpayer money to provide pensions to Confederate soldiers. It included compulsory service to the state that could be waived if you paid your “road tax.” They required a literacy test for all male voters, which could be waived if you were a “male person who was on January 1st, 1867, or at any date prior thereto, entitled to vote under the constitution or statutes of any State of the United States.”** The provision in Section 5 that would become known as the “grandfather clause” exempted the “son or grandson of any such person not less than twenty-one years of age at the date of the adoption of this Constitution.”11 They didn’t have to hide it any longer. The only thing that would make their intentions more obvious is to restrict voting to “any male citizen over eighteen who has never used a jar of Murray’s or a washcloth.”