Oklahoma Circumvents Guinn Ruling With New Voter Registration Law

After the Supreme Court struck down Oklahoma's grandfather clause in Guinn v. United States (1915), the Oklahoma legislature immediately passed a new law giving all persons who had voted in 1914 (under the unconstitutional system) permanent registration, while requiring all others — effectively all Black voters — to register within a 12-day window or be permanently disenfranchised. The Supreme Court struck this down in Lane v. Wilson (1939), but Black voters had been effectively denied the franchise in Oklahoma for 24 more years in the interim.