Read the following excerpt from the U.S. Supreme Court's majority opinion in *Williams v. Mississippi* (1898):
"The constitution of Mississippi and its statutes do not on their face discriminate between the races, and it has not been shown that their actual administration was evil; only that evil was possible under them."
Which of the following historical developments in the post-Reconstruction South was most directly enabled by the judicial reasoning in the excerpt?
- AThe growth of de facto segregation in Northern housing and employment through customary and informal practices.
- The widespread implementation of disenfranchisement measures, such as literacy tests and poll taxes, that were facially neutral but discriminatory in practice.Cevap
- CThe expansion of sharecropping arrangements as voluntary and equitable contracts that offered genuine economic mobility to Black farmers.
- DThe closure of constitutional loopholes that permitted involuntary servitude as a criminal punishment in southern states.
Cevap
The widespread implementation of disenfranchisement measures, such as literacy tests and poll taxes, that were facially neutral but discriminatory in practice.
The correct answer is correct because the Supreme Court's decision in *Williams v. Mississippi* (1898) affirmed that state constitutional provisions and statutes governing voting requirements (like literacy tests and poll taxes) were constitutional as long as they did not explicitly mention race on their face. This judicial validation allowed Southern states to rapidly implement and enforce facially neutral laws designed specifically to disenfranchise Black citizens while avoiding federal intervention under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
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Anahtar Kavram
The legal and judicial mechanisms used to establish disenfranchisement and segregation in the Jim Crow South, specifically through facially neutral laws.
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