Describe the methods used to disfranchise african-american voters in the early 1900's.?

Literacy tests, along with poll taxes and extra-legal intimidation were used to deny suffrage to African-Americans in a number of southern states, while allowing many illiterate whites to vote. This was accomplished by making the test inordinately difficult and allowing test-givers to choose who had to take the test and who did not. Most African-Americans in the south were effectively disenfranchised from the 1890s until the 1960s.