Louisiana v. Callais · ¶132

But all the hosannas were many years premature: “In the century that followed,” the Fifteenth Amendment “proved little more than a parchment promise.” Allen, 599 U. S., at 10. Violence and intimidation were ever-present ways to deny Black citizens their right to vote. But often force was not needed, because state laws could well enough accomplish that goal. Especially in the South, States soon put in place a host of facially race-neutral devices to systematically disenfranchise African American citizens. Poll taxes, literacy tests, “good character” exams, property qualifications, convoluted registration processes—all these and more, when combined with administrative discretion, effectively suppressed the Black vote, without much affecting the White one. See South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301, 311 (1966). Congress could have acted: the Fifteenth Amendment gave it the “power to…

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