Cite as: 515 U. S. 900 (1995)
Ginsburg, J., dissenting
son & B. Grofman eds. 1994) (quoting Robert Toombs). In pursuit of this objective, Georgia enacted a cumulative poll tax, requiring voters to show they had paid past as well as current poll taxes; one historian described this tax as the "most effective bar to Negro suffrage ever devised." A. Stone, Studies in the American Race Problem 354-355 (1908).
In 1890, the Georgia General Assembly authorized "white primaries"; keeping blacks out of the Democratic primary effectively excluded them from Georgia's political life, for victory in the Democratic primary was tantamount to election. McDonald, Binford, & Johnson, supra, at 68-69. Early in this century, Georgia Governor Hoke Smith persuaded the legislature to pass the "Disenfranchisement Act of 1908"; true to its title, this measure added various property, "good character," and literacy requirements that, as administered, served to keep blacks from voting. Id., at 69; see also Katzenbach, 383 U. S., at 310 (tests of this order were "specifically designed to prevent Negroes from voting"). The result, as one commentator observed 25 years later, was an " 'almost absolute exclusion of the Negro voice in state and federal elections.' " McDonald, Binford, & Johnson, supra, at 70 (quoting R. Wardlaw, Negro Suffrage in Georgia, 1867-1930, p. 69 (unpublished 1932)).
Faced with a political situation scarcely open to self-correction—disenfranchised blacks had no electoral influence, hence no muscle to lobby the legislature for change— the Court intervened. It invalidated white primaries, see Smith v. Allwright, 321 U. S. 649 (1944), and other burdens on minority voting. See, e. g., Schnell v. Davis, 336 U. S. 933 (1949) (per curiam) (discriminatory application of voting tests); Lane v. Wilson, 307 U. S. 268 (1939) (procedural hurdles); Guinn v. United States, 238 U. S. 347 (1915) (grandfather clauses).
It was against this backdrop that the Court, construing the Equal Protection Clause, undertook to ensure that ap-
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