<P> By 1869, amendments had been passed to abolish slavery and provide citizenship and equal protection under the laws, but the narrow election of Ulysses S. Grant to the presidency in 1868 convinced a majority of Republicans that protecting the franchise of black voters was important for the party's future . After rejecting more sweeping versions of a suffrage amendment, Congress proposed a compromise amendment banning franchise restrictions on the basis of race, color, or previous servitude on February 26, 1869 . The amendment survived a difficult ratification fight and was adopted on March 30, 1870 . After blacks gained the vote, the Ku Klux Klan directed some of their attacks to disrupt their political meetings and intimidate them at the polls, to suppress black participation . In the mid-1870s, there was a rise in new insurgent groups, such as the Red Shirts and White League, who acted on behalf of the Democratic Party to violently suppress black voting . While white Democrats regained power in southern state legislatures, through the 1880s and early 1890s, numerous blacks continued to be elected to local offices in many states, as well as to Congress as late as 1894 . </P> <P> From 1890 to 1910, all the states of the former Confederacy passed new constitutions and other laws that incorporated methods to disfranchise blacks, such as poll taxes, residency rules, and literacy tests administered by white staff, sometimes with exemptions for whites via grandfather clauses . When challenges reached the Supreme Court, it interpreted the amendment narrowly, ruling based on the stated intent of the laws rather than their practical effect . The results in voter suppression were dramatic, as voter rolls fells: nearly all blacks, as well as tens of thousands of poor whites in Alabama and other states, were forced off the voter registration rolls and out of the political system, effectively excluding millions of people from representation . Democratic state legislatures passed racial segregation laws for public facilities and other types of Jim Crow restrictions . During this period of political struggle, the rate of lynchings in the South reached an all - time high . </P> <P> In the twentieth century, the Court interpreted the amendment more broadly, striking down grandfather clauses in Guinn v. United States (1915). It took a quarter century to finally dismantle the white primary system in the "Texas primary cases" (1927--1953). With the South having become a one - party region after the disfranchisement of blacks, Democratic Party primaries were the only competitive contests in the states . But Southern states reacted rapidly to Supreme Court decisions, often devising new ways to continue to exclude blacks from voter rolls and voting; most blacks in the South did not gain the ability to vote until after passage of the mid-1960s federal civil rights legislation and beginning of federal oversight of voter registration and district boundaries . The Twenty - fourth Amendment (1964) forbade the requirement for poll taxes in federal elections; by this time five of the eleven southern states continued to require such taxes . Together with the US Supreme Court ruling in Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections (1966), which forbade requiring poll taxes in state elections, blacks regained the opportunity to participate in the American political system . </P> <Table> <Tr> <Td> <Ul> <Li> 1884: Elk v. Wilkins </Li> <Li> 1898: United States v. Wong Kim Ark </Li> <Li> 1967: Afroyim v. Rusk </Li> </Ul> <P> </P> </Td> <Td> <Ul> <Li> 1980: Vance v. Terrazas </Li> <Li> 1982: Plyler v. Doe </Li> </Ul> <P> </P> </Td> </Tr> </Table>

Which three amendments were given time limits to pass