 This is the only "coup d'état" (violent overthrow of an elected government) in United States history.In 1899, the Democrat-dominated state legislature ratified a new constitution with a suffrage amendment, whose requirements for poll taxes, literacy tests, lengthier residency, and similar mechanisms disfranchised most blacks and many poor whites.Illiterate whites were protected by a grandfather clause so that if a father or grandfather had voted in 1860 (when all voters were white), his sons or grandsons did not have to pass the literacy test of 1899.