===Voting disfranchisement===
Between 1890 and 1920, many state governments prevented most blacks from voting by various techniques, such as poll taxes (a person had to pay a voluntary tax to vote) and fake literacy tests (that whites always passed but blacks always failed).<ref>Whites who would be limited by the voting laws were protected by "grandfather clauses"--they could vote if their grandfather could vote. These clauses were found to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1915.</ref> Of 181,000 African-American males of voting age in [[Alabama]] in 1900, only 3,000 were registered to vote. Typically, the ministers and and ten to fifty prominent blacks in every county were allowed to vote.
==Segregation approved by the courts==