Disfranchisement after the Reconstruction era

Disfranchisement after the Reconstruction era in the United States, especially in the Southern United States, was a series of laws, new constitutions, and practices that were deliberately used to prevent black citizens from registering to vote and voting. These measures were enacted by the former Confederate states following the end of the Reconstruction era in the late 19th century. Efforts were also made in Maryland, Kentucky, and Oklahoma. Their actions were designed to thwart the objective of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1870, which prohibited states from depriving voters of their voting rights based on race. The laws were frequently written in ways to be ostensibly non-racial on paper, but were implemented in ways that selectively suppressed black voters apart from other voters.