by force or fraud. Later the division of the white vote by the
Populist party also endangered white supremacy in the South.

In this same year (1890) Mississippi framed a new constitution, which
required as a prerequisite for voting a residence of two years in the
State and one year in the district or town. A poll tax of two
dollars--to be increased to three at the discretion of the county
commissioners--was levied on all able-bodied men between twenty-one and
sixty. This tax, and all other taxes due for the two previous years,
must be paid before the 1st of February of the election year. All these
provisions, though applying equally to all the population, greatly
lessened the negro vote. Negroes are notoriously migratory, and a large
proportion never remain two years in the same place. The poll tax could
not be collected by legal process, and to pay the tax for two years,
four dollars or more, eight months in advance of an election, seemed to
the average negro to be rank extravagance. Moreover, few politicians are
reckless enough to arrange for the payment of poll taxes in exchange for
the promised delivery of votes eight months away, when half the would-be
voters might be in another county, or even in another State. To clinch
the matter, the constitution further provided that after 1892, in
addition to the qualifications mentioned above, a person desiring to
vote must be able to read any section of the constitution, "or he shall be
able to understand the same when read to him, or give a reasonable
interpretation thereof." Even when fairly administered, this section
operated to disfranchise more negroes than whites, for fewer can read and
fewer can understand a legal instrument. But it is obvious that the
opportunities for discrimination are great: a simple section can be read to
an illiterate white, while a more difficult section, filled with
technicalities, may be read to a negro applicant; and the phrase "a
reasonable interpretation" may mean one thing in the case of a negro and
quite another where a white man is concerned. It is perhaps not
surprising that only 5123 Republican votes were reported in 1896, and
hardly more, in 1912, were cast for Taft and Roosevelt together.

South Carolina followed the lead of Mississippi a little more frankly in
1895, by adopting suffrage amendments which provided for two years'
residence in the State, one year in the county, and the payment of a
poll tax six months before the e