Pick TWO of the following items and explain how each was used by southerners to restrict the freedoms/rights of former slaves in the Reconstruction era.
Literacy Tests
Poll Taxes
Grandfather Clauses
Ku Klux Klan
Sharecropping
Black Codes
1. Literacy Tests:
After the Civil War, the former Confederate States implemented literacy tests to prevent African Americans from voting. The tests were designed to be deliberately difficult to pass and were used to disenfranchise black voters. White officials would create arbitrary rules, ask trick questions, and make the test last for an extended period of time. It was all part of an attempt to ensure that only white men could vote while keeping African Americans off the voting rolls. The tests were used as a way to restrict the freedoms and rights of former slaves in the Reconstruction era, as they were prevented from participating in the democratic process.
2. Grandfather Clauses:
Grandfather clauses were laws enacted in southern states that allowed only those who could prove that their grandfathers had been able to vote before 1867 (before the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified) to vote without restriction. This exemption meant that many white southerners, who could not otherwise meet the new voting requirements, were able to maintain their voting rights, while ensuring that newly enfranchised African Americans could not. By using grandfather clauses, southern states were able to create a legal loophole that allowed them to continue restricting the rights and freedoms of former slaves, who were prevented from voting due to their lack of generational citizenship.