&gt; The 14th Amendment just says that blacks have equal rights to vote as whites.<p>No, it doesn&#x27;t say that at all. You are probably thinking of the 15th Amendment, section 1 of which is &quot;The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.&quot;<p>&gt;  The idea that poll taxes or literacy tests or official intimidation while in transit to the polling places are somehow unconstitutional is and always has been... absolutely correct<p>Except, not; hence the prohibition of poll taxes by the <i>24th Amendment</i>, and the prohibition of literacy tests for voting in some districts by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, later amended to apply to the whole country in 1970.<p>(Those things have, no doubt, always been <i>wrong</i>; they were not, however, unconstitutional, or even prohibited federally in any form, until much later than the 15th Amendment.)