18 April 2022
A mob of armed, white supremacist insurrectionists posing outside the burned-out offices of the Wilmington, North Carolina Daily Record, the state’s only Black-owned, daily newspaper following the successful coup against the city's government in November 1898.
In present-day use, the phrase grandfather clause seems innocent enough. It refers to a rule that exempts current cases from changes in the rules; any new rule would only apply to future cases. But the phrase has its roots in the white supremacist politics of the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The original grandfather clause exempted men who could vote, or whose ancestors could vote, in 1867 from new restrictions on the franchise. In effect, the law denied the vote to Black men without impacting the ability of white men to vote.
The fifteenth amendment to the US Constitution, ratified in February 1870, prohibited states from denying the vote to any citizen on account of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” In short, the amendment gave Black men the right to vote. As a result, Blacks began to be elected to offices throughout the US south. But with the end of Reconstruction and the withdrawal of federal troops from the south in 1877, whites again reasserted control in most, but not all of the south.
One of the exceptions was Wilmington, North Carolina, the largest city in the state and a majority Black one. Black businesses—including the state’s, and perhaps the nation’s, only Black-owned daily newspaper—thrived in the city, and the local political offices were mostly held by Black officeholders.
White resentment of this situation grew, and on 10 November 1898, some 2,000 white men staged a violent coup, removing the city government from power, destroying Black businesses, and killing an unknown number of Black citizens, probably numbering in the hundreds. The coup was successful in that it returned control of the city to white men and the insurrectionists were not punished. It is said to be the only successful coup on US soil.
To prevent what happened in Wilmington from recurring, the state legislature, now dominated by white supremacists, sought not to punish the insurrectionists, but to prevent Blacks from voting and holding office. To skirt the fifteenth amendment, they proposed a literacy test, but exempted those whose fathers or grandfathers could vote in 1867 from the test. While the restriction was not explicitly based on race, it had the effect of disenfranchising Black men, while leaving the ability of white men to vote unaffected.
The phrase grandfather clause appears by 7 February 1899 in relation to a proposed amendment to the North Carolina constitution in the Charlotte Daily Observer:
Your correspondent to-day had a chat with State Chairman Simmons, in regard to the franchise amendment to the constitution. Chairman Simmons said: “There is no division of opinion in the caucus to reporting the amendment favorably. There is some little difference as to details; but all these will quickly be agreed on and then the amendment will pass with practical unanimity. The only difference of view is as to the limitation of the ‘grandfather clause.’
“In the first draft of the amendment the date after which anybody who cannot read the constitution would be barred from voting, that is, after coming of age, was put down as 1902. Some favor making it 1904. It is urged that it will promote education and that there is no excuse for any young white man being unable to read and write[.] It is contended, on the other hand, that, in the west particularly, there are some white men who oppose education and who do not permit their children to attend school.”
But the phrase was being used as a term-of-art in the political deliberations. Two days later, Georgia’s Augusta Chronicle uses the phrase and gives the texts of the proposed amendments:
The trouble at Wilmington, N.C., last year, growing out of negro control of the offices, has resulted in the determination of North Carolina to follow the lead of Mississippi and Louisiana, and so amend their state constitution as to eliminate the mass of negroes from participation in elections. It is proposed to require an educational qualification for the right of suffrage, but to relieve white men from this requirement. It will require amendment of the suffrage clauses of the constitution, and the propositions that are now under discussion are thus set forth in the Raleigh News and Observer:
“Section 5. No male person who was on January 1, 1867, or at any time prior thereto, entitled to vote under the laws of any state in the United States wherein he then resided, and no sone or grandson of any such person not less than 21 years old at the date of the adoption of this amendment of the Constitution shall be denied the right to register and vote at any election in this state by reason of the educational qualification prescribed in this article, provided he shall have registered prior to December 1, 1902, in accordance with the terms of this article, and no person shall be allowed to register under this section after that date.”
Senator Justice, at the Friday night caucus offered the following as a substitute for the above section:
“Section 5. No male person who was on January 1st, 1867, or at any time prior thereto, entitled to vote under the laws of any state in the United States wherein he then resided and no lineal descendent of any such person shall be denied the right to register and vote at any election in this state by reason of his failure to possess the educational qualification presented in section four of this article.”
It will be seen that the committee required a time to be fixed when sons and grandsons could register and take advantage of the “grandfather clause.”
Other southern states followed North Carolina’s lead, but not without controversy. And in 1915 the US Supreme Court ruled literacy tests, and the associated grandfather clauses, unconstitutional.
By 1919 we start seeing grandfather clause used in contexts divorced from both race and the franchise. For example, the 1919 Michigan Technic published an article that used grandfather’s clause in reference to the licensing of engineers:
The need was recognized of a “grandfather’s clause” in any bill in order to avoid an ex post facto law and in order not to work hardship upon anyone now in the practice of the profession.
Today, grandfather clause is often used without knowledge of its origin and without any racist intent. It is often also received, by white audiences at least, as innocent. But to those who know its origins and who have suffered racial discrimination, its use can be a reminder of those offenses suffered.
Sources:
Drayer, C.E. “Engineer License Bills.” The Michigan Technic, vol. 32, 1919, 47. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
“The Local Option Bill Up.” Charlotte Daily Observer (North Carolina), 7 February 1899, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2015, s.v. grandfather clause, n.
“Suffrage in North Carolina.” Augusta Chronicle (Georgia), 9 February 1899, 4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Photo credit: unknown photographer, 1898. Public domain image.