to all men equally, in actuality the requirements were directed against persons of color. States used a variety of measures to exclude the black vote: literacy tests, white-only primaries, poll taxes, and grandfather clauses. These techniques proved successful in excluding blacks from political participation until the mid-1960s. Consequently, whites completely dominated all levels of government in the Southern states through the 1930s and for the following few decades.
By the 1890s the popular voter eligibility requirements in the South were the grandfather clause and literacy tests. Grandfather clauses required all voters to show that their ancestors were eligible to vote in 1866. Blacks in 1890 had no ancestors who were eligible to vote in 1866 because the Fifteenth Amendment had not been passed yet to grant such rights to blacks. If a person could not show proof of 1866 voting ancestors, then they had to pass a literacy test. Nearly all black men in the South were disqualified from voting. As was often the case, most whites did not have to take literacy test, even though many could not read, because typically most white men had ancestors eligible to vote in 1866. Finally, in 1915 in Guinn v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled grandfather clauses unconstitutional.
With the ban on grandfather clauses, white-only primaries became the next barrier raised to block black voters. Under laws adopted by most Southern states, political parties could set their own rules for membership. The Democratic Party became organized as private clubs in each state and excluded all blacks. Only party members could vote for candidates in its primaries. Since the Democratic Party overwhelmingly dominated politics in the South, whoever won the Democratic primaries would readily win the general election. Any black votes cast in the general election were, therefore, usually meaningless. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Grovey v. Townsend (1935) that since the political parties had become private clubs and not part of state government, their actions were not restricted by the Constitution. White-only primaries would continue into the 1940s.
Another common barrier to black voters and to poor whites was the poll tax. The poll tax was simply a fee charged at the polling (voting) place. Since many black Americans could not afford to pay the tax, by the early twentieth century some states began to see poll taxes as a means to exclude blacks from the political process. The Court in Breedlove v. Suttles(1937) upheld the poll tax as constitutionally valid because it was applied to both black and white voters. The poll tax persisted until 1964 when the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, abolishing the poll tax in federal elections.
Those black Americans who were able to exercise their right to vote, voted overwhelmingly Republican from the 1870s through the 1920s. They were voting for the party of Abraham Lincoln who had finally given black slaves their freedom. Given their recent emergence from slavery and extensive discrimination by whites, which maintained political control, the black population held little political power. Taking the black vote for granted through the years, the Republican Party actually offered little to black Americans. The Democratic Party, however, offered even less. A black had never been seated at a Democratic National Convention prior to the 1930s. In 1928, when the Democratic convention was held in Houston, Texas, several black alternates were seated behind chicken wire, separated from the white delegates. This lack of political power, in addition to low economic status, left black Americans particularly vulnerable to the impacts of the Depression.
Black Americans entered the Great Depression already economically deprived.
The introduction of New Deal work relief programs in 1933 raised some hope for federal assistance. But because local governments dominated by white supremacists guided politics administered many New Deal programs, little help arrived.
The combination of longs