cant for registration must
be able to read and write and must have worked the greater part of the
twelve months next preceding, or he or his wife must own forty acres of
land or real estate or personal property assessed at not less than three
hundred dollars. A long list of disqualifying crimes was added,
including wife-beating and conviction for vagrancy. As if this were not
enough, after 1903 an applicant for registration might be required to state
where he had lived during the preceding five years, the name or names by
which known, and the names of his employers. Refusal to answer was made a
bar to registration, and wilful misstatement was regarded as perjury.

Oklahoma adopted its disfranchising amendment in 1910, without valid
reason so far as any one outside the State could see, as the proportion
of negroes was very small. An attempt was made permanently to
disfranchise the illiterate negro by the "grandfather clause," while
allowing illiterate white voters to vote forever. Other States allowed a
limited time in which to register on a permanent roll, after which all
illiterates were to be disfranchised. Oklahoma sought to keep suffrage
permanently open to illiterate whites, while closing it to illiterate
negroes. This amendment was declared unconstitutional by the United
States Supreme Court in June, 1915, on the ground that a State cannot
reestablish conditions existing before the ratification of the Fifteenth
Amendment, even though the disfranchising amendment contained no
"express words of exclusion" but "inherently brings that result into
existence."[1] What the Court will do with other similar constitutional
amendments when they are brought before it is not so certain. All differ
somewhat, and it is possible that the Court may let the whole or a part
of some of them stand. If not, it is probable that straight educational
and property qualifications will be substituted. In fact, if the Court
disapproves the permanent roll but allows the remainder to stand,
educational and property qualifications will prevail in several States.

[Footnote 1: Guinn _vs._ United States, 238 U.S., 347.]

All these plans for disfranchisement have accomplished the desired
results up to the present time. The negro vote has been greatly reduced
and elections are decided by the votes of white men. In some States,
negroes who could easily pass the tests no longer take the trouble to go
to the polls. The number of white voters also grow