Poll Taxes, Literacy Tests, and White Primaries Systematically Disenfranchise Black Voters

Across 11 Southern states throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the combination of poll taxes, literacy tests, white primaries, grandfather clauses, and violence reduced Black voter registration to near zero despite the 15th Amendment. In Mississippi, 8,000 of 500,000 Black residents were registered to vote. In Alabama, Black voter registration was 2% of the eligible population. The white primary — declaring Democratic Party primaries private affairs open only to white voters in one-party Southern states — effectively eliminated the Black vote entirely. The Supreme Court did not strike down white primaries until Smith v. Allwright in 1944.