Black suffrage in the United States

After 1870, Black people were theoretically equal before the law, but in the period between the end of Reconstruction era and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 this was frequently infringed in practice.

Removal of the property requirements, so as to enfranchise poor whites, meant that Black people would be able to vote too, so the search began for other means to disenfranchise them.

[5] Black people seeking suffrage were often met with violence and disenfranchisement after the Reconstruction Era ended and there were no longer federal troops enforcing Negro rights in the states of the former Confederacy.

In United States v. Reese (1876), the Court upheld voting requirements, such as literacy tests, which do not explicitly discriminate on the basis of race.

A group of black activists formed the Niagara Movement in 1905, rebuking the 1895 Atlanta Compromise of Booker T. Washington and issuing a declaration that demanded universal male suffrage.

In Guinn v. United States (1915), the Supreme Court struck down a grandfather clause that functionally exempted only white people from literacy tests.

In Gomillion v. Lightfoot (1960) the Supreme Court struck down a plan to redraw the district lines of Tuskegee, Alabama, on the grounds that it would disenfranchise black voters.

The Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, passed in 1962–1964, banned poll taxes as a precondition for voting in federal elections.

In Alabama, the highly publicized Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965 met with a violent response, bringing more scrutiny to suppression of black voters.

The Court ruled in Shaw v. Reno (1993) that if a redistricting plan is "so bizarre on its face that it is 'unexplainable on grounds other than race'", it must be held to a "strict scrutiny" standard under the Fourteenth Amendment.

[10] However, the Supreme Court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder (2013), holding that the racist practices that necessitated the law in 1965 no longer existed in 2013.