Southern United States The term originated in late 19th-century legislation and constitutional amendments passed by a number of
Southern U.S. states, which created new requirements for
literacy tests, payment of
poll taxes and residency and property restrictions to register to vote. States in some cases exempted those whose ancestors (e.g.,
grandfathers) had the right to vote before the
American Civil War or as of a particular date from such requirements. The intent and effect of such rules was to prevent former
African-American slaves and their descendants from voting but without denying poor and illiterate whites the right to vote. Although these original grandfather clauses were eventually ruled unconstitutional, the terms
grandfather clause and
grandfather have been adapted to other uses. The original grandfather clauses were contained in new
state constitutions and
Jim Crow laws passed between 1890 and 1908 by white-dominated
state legislatures including
Alabama,
Georgia,
Louisiana,
North Carolina,
Oklahoma, and
Virginia. They restricted
voter registration, effectively preventing African Americans from voting. Racial restrictions on voting in place before 1870 were invalidated by the
Fifteenth Amendment. After
Democrats took control of state legislatures again, especially after the
Compromise of 1877, they began to work to restrict the ability of black people to vote.
Paramilitary groups such as the
White League,
Red Shirts, and rifle clubs had intimidated black people or barred them from the polls in numerous elections before what they called the
Redemption (restoration of
white supremacy). Nonetheless, a coalition of
Populists and
Republicans in
fusion tickets in the 1880s and 1890s gained some seats and won some governor positions. To prevent such coalitions in the future, the Democrats wanted to exclude freedmen and other black people from voting; in some states they also restricted poor whites to avoid biracial coalitions. White Democrats developed statutes and passed new constitutions creating restrictive voter registration rules. Examples included imposition of
poll taxes and residency and
literacy tests. An exemption to such requirements was made for all persons allowed to vote before the
American Civil War, and any of their descendants. The term
grandfather clause arose from the fact that the laws tied the then-current generation's voting rights to those of their grandfathers. According to Black's
Law Dictionary, some Southern states adopted constitutional provisions exempting from the literacy requirements descendants of those who fought in the army or navy of the United States or of the Confederate States during a time of war. After the
U.S. Supreme Court found such provisions unconstitutional in
Guinn v. United States (1915), states were forced to stop using the grandfather clauses to provide exemption to literacy tests. Without the grandfather clauses, tens of thousands of poor Southern whites were
disenfranchised in the early 20th century. As decades passed, Southern states tended to expand the franchise for poor whites, but most black people could not vote until after passage of the 1965
Voting Rights Act. Ratification in 1964 of the
Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibited the use of poll taxes in federal elections, but some states continued to use them in state elections. The 1965
Voting Rights Act had provisions to protect voter registration and access to elections, with federal enforcement and supervision where necessary. In 1966, the Supreme Court ruled in
Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections that poll taxes could not be used in any elections. This secured the franchise for most citizens, and voter registration and turnout climbed dramatically in Southern states.
Other contexts There is also a rather different, older type of
grandfather clause, perhaps more properly a
grandfather principle in which a government blots out transactions of the recent past, usually those of a predecessor government. The modern analogue may be repudiating public debt, but the original was
Henry II's principle, preserved in many of his judgments, "Let it be as it was on the day of
my grandfather's death", a principle by which he repudiated all the royal grants that had been made in the previous 19 years under
King Stephen. ==Modern examples==