 While poll taxes and literacy requirements banned many poor or illiterate Americans from voting, these stipulations frequently had loopholes that exempted European Americans from meeting the requirements.In Oklahoma, for instance, anyone qualified to vote before 1866, or related to someone qualified to vote before 1866 (a kind of "grandfather clause"), was exempted from the literacy requirement; but the only persons who had the franchise before that year were white, or European-American males.European Americans were effectively exempted from the literacy testing, whereas black Americans were effectively singled out by the law.