By the end of the century, southern states had begun to codify the separation between whites and blacks—a thorny task considering that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments protected African Americans’ civil and voting rights. The following excerpts from the Mississippi Constitution of 1890 show the ways in which southern officials rewrote the law to maintain white supremacy.
SEC. 207. Separate schools shall be maintained for children of the white and colored races. . . .
SEC. 243. A uniform poll tax of two dollars, to be used in aid of the common schools, and for no other purpose, is hereby imposed on every male inhabitant of this State between the ages of twenty-one and sixty years, except persons who are deaf and dumb or blind, or who are maimed by loss of hand or foot; said tax to be a lien only upon taxable property. The board of supervisors of any county may, for the purpose of aiding the common schools in that county, increase the poll tax in said county, but in no case shall the entire poll tax exceed in any one year three dollars on each poll. No criminal proceedings shall be allowed to enforce the collection of the poll tax.
SEC. 244. On and after the first day of January, A.D., 1892, every elector shall, in addition to the foregoing qualifications, be able to read any section of the constitution of this State; or he shall be able to understand the same when read to him, or give a reasonable interpretation thereof. A new registration shall be made before the next ensuing election after January the first, A.D., 1892. . . .
SEC. 263. The marriage of a white person with a negro or mulatto, or person who shall have one-eighth or more of negro blood, shall be unlawful and void.
SEC. 264. No person shall be a grand or petit juror unless a qualified elector and able to read and write; but the want of any such qualification in any juror shall not vitiate any indictment or verdict. The legislature shall provide by law for procuring a list of persons so qualified, and the drawing therefrom of grand and petit jurors for each term of the circuit court.
Source: Constitution of the State of Mississippi, Adopted November 1, 1890 (Jackson, MS: Clarion-Ledger, 1891), 47, 55, 61–62.