Cite as: 528 U. S. 495 (2000)
Opinion of the Court
Though the commitment was clear, the reality remained far from the promise. Manipulative devices and practices were soon employed to deny the vote to blacks. We have cataloged before the "variety and persistence" of these techniques. South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301, 311- 312 (1966) (citing, e. g., Guinn, supra (grandfather clause); Myers v. Anderson, 238 U. S. 368 (1915) (same); Lane v. Wilson, 307 U. S. 268 (1939) ("procedural hurdles"); Terry v. Adams, 345 U. S. 461 (1953) (white primary); Smith v. Allwright, 321 U. S. 649 (1944) (same); United States v. Thomas, 362 U. S. 58 (1960) (per curiam) (registration challenges); Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U. S. 339 (1960) (racial gerrymandering); Louisiana v. United States, 380 U. S. 145 (1965) ("interpretation tests")). Progress was slow, particularly when litigation had to proceed case by case, district by district, sometimes voter by voter. See 383 U. S., at 313-315.
Important precedents did emerge, however, which give instruction in the case now before us. The Fifteenth Amendment was quite sufficient to invalidate a scheme which did not mention race but instead used ancestry in an attempt to confine and restrict the voting franchise. In 1910, the State of Oklahoma enacted a literacy requirement for voting eligibility, but exempted from that requirement the " 'lineal descendant[s]' " of persons who were " 'on January 1, 1866, or at any time prior thereto, entitled to vote under any form of government, or who at that time resided in some foreign nation.' " Guinn, supra, at 357. Those persons whose ancestors were entitled to vote under the State's previous, discriminatory voting laws were thus exempted from the eligibility test. Recognizing that the test served only to perpetuate those old laws and to effect a transparent racial exclusion, the Court invalidated it. 238 U. S., at 364-365.
More subtle, perhaps, than the grandfather device in Guinn were the evasions attempted in the white primary cases; but the Fifteenth Amendment, again by its own terms, sufficed to strike down these voting systems, systems de-
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