“Grandfather” Clauses Unconstitutional
In Guinn v. United States, decided on this day, the Supreme Court held that “grandfather” clauses were unconstitutional. Grandfather clauses were 19th century laws that exempted people from voter literacy tests if a grandfather had been a registered voter, had voted in some other jurisdiction, or had served in the armed forces before 1866.
The clauses were designed to permit illiterate white voters to vote (because many had grandfathers who had voted, but not African-Americans (because most of their grandfathers had been slaves). The court decision on this day invalidated grandfather clauses in Oklahoma, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Virginia and North Carolina laws.
The terms “grandfather clause” and “grandfathered in” have entered the English language as any law or practice by which people are exempted from a new law if they had been engaging in the practice in the past.
The Court: “The so-called Grandfather Clause of the amendment to the constitution of Oklahoma of 1910 is void because it violates the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.”
Learn more about the history of the “grandfather clause:” http://www.blackpast.org/aah/grandfather-clause-1898-1915
Read: Richard M. Valelly, The Two Reconstructions: The Struggle for Black Enfranchisement (2004)
And more about its racial history: http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/10/21/239081586/the-racial-history-of-the-grandfather-clause
Learn more about African American history: Henry Louis Gates, Life Upon These Shores: Looking at African American History, 1513-2008 (2011)