in a new constitution framed in 1890, defined
the franchise in terms that bore heavily upon the negro. In the debates
of its convention members talked frankly and freely of their intention
to disqualify the race; the clause bore no mention of discrimination. It
permitted persons to vote who, being male citizens over twenty-one, and
having reasonable residence qualifications, had paid a poll or other tax
for two years preceding the election, and could read, or understand and
interpret when read to them, any section of the constitution of the
State. Under this clause, between the cumulative tax and the large
discretionary powers vested in the officers of enrollment, the negro
electorate was reduced until it was negligible in Mississippi; and it
was a subject of admiration for other Southern States, which proceeded
to imitate it.

All of the cotton States but Florida and Texas, and most of the old
slave States, revised their electoral clauses in the next twenty years.
Arkansas, in 1893, based the franchise on a one-year poll-tax. South
Carolina, in 1895, used residence, enrollment, and poll-tax, while the
convention called to disfranchise the negro passed resolutions of
sympathy for Cuban independence. Delaware, in 1897, established an
educational test. Louisiana, in 1898, established education and a
poll-tax; North Carolina, in 1900, did the same. Alabama, in 1901, made
use of residence, registry, and poll-tax. Virginia based the suffrage on
property, literacy, or poll-tax in 1902. Georgia did the same in 1908,
and the new State of Oklahoma followed the Southern custom in 1910.

It was relatively easy to exclude most of the negroes by means of
qualifications such as these, but every convention was embarrassed by
the fact that each qualification excluded, as well, some of the white
voters. In nearly every case revisions were accompanied by a
determination to save the whites, and for this purpose a temporary basis
of enrollment was created in addition to the permanent. Louisiana
devised the favorite method in 1898. Her constitution provided that, for
a given period, persons who could not qualify under the general clause
might be placed upon the roll of voters if they had voted in the State
before 1867 or were descended from such voters. The "grandfather
clause," as this was immediately called, saved the poor whites, and was
imitated by North Carolina, Alabama, Virginia, and Georgia. The governor
of Louisiana, in 1898, sang