The literacy test was intended to prevent African Americans from voting.
They made literacy tests an easy way to prevent freed slaves from voting.
The federal government has extremely limited authority over the states, Article VI, Clause 2 of the United States Constitution, is known as the Supremacy Clause, but even it has limits. The 10th amendment guarantees that the states retain all power not specifically granted the federal government by the constitution.
There were many examples of disenfranchisement and restrictions placed on African-Americans after the Reconstruction. These included poll taxes, educational requirements, grandfather clauses, the Eight Box Law in South Carolina, property requirements, Jim Crow laws, and White Primaries.
A husband is leaving his wife. They have been fighting. He wants to make sure there are no problems while he is moving his belongings out of the home. He can ask for a civil standby. The police come and "stand by" to make sure there are no problems. This is one example...but it should give you the idea.
how did the grandfather clause effect blacks after the civil war
The point of using a grandfather clause was to allow literacy tests to be conducted for voting but not to deny the right to vote for those who's ancestors had the right to vote before the literacy tests were created.
Southern states sometimes used a grandfather clause to allow them to exempt individuals from literacy tests and poll taxes if their ancestors had voted prior to the Civil War. This effectively disenfranchised Black citizens while allowing poor and illiterate whites to continue voting.
The grandfather clause existed in the southern United States, specifically in states that implemented discriminatory voting restrictions against African Americans after the Reconstruction period. It allowed individuals to vote if their ancestors had been eligible to vote before the Civil War, effectively disenfranchising African Americans.
The northern States had been abolitionist all along and freed slaves basically had the same civil rights there as anyone, including the right to vote. The southern States recognised the right of slave owners to free their slaves but their civil rights were in practice unequal to those of whites, a situation that was to remain almost unchanged until the 1960s. The right to vote in southern States was non-existent for blacks before the Civil War. Even after the Civil War, many southern States would enact the so-called Grandfather Clause in their voting legislation to keep blacks from the voting registers. This Grandfather Clause meant that anyone wishing to vote had to pass a literacy test or even several tests first before he could register, unless his father/grandfather already had been qualified to vote (that is, before the Civil War). This meant that illiterate whites could simply register, and illiterate blacks had to pass the tests first.
Amendments made it possible for women and African Americans and other minorities to vote, and the civil rights act made it illegal to impose poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses on the voting offices.
The Equal Protection Clause.
After the civil war, the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments were added to the constitution and the three-fifth clause and the fugitive clause were stated.
poll taxes and literacy tests
The literacy test was intended to prevent African Americans from voting.
The poll taxes prevented former slaves from voting, but they also denied poor whites the right to vote. To avoid this, some southern states passed grandfather clauses, which stated that if a person's grandfather had full citizenship rights prior to the Civil War, he was exempt from poll taxes and literacy tests. This ensured that African American citizens would still be denied the right to vote, while poor white citizens would be spared.
Mr. Curtain