Despite the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, which granted citizenship and equal protection under the law to all individuals born or naturalized in the United States, southern states circumvented these protections through various means. For example, they employed grandfather clauses, exempting individuals from literacy tests and poll taxes if their ancestors had been eligible to vote before the Civil War, effectively disenfranchising newly freed African Americans. Furthermore, the Supreme Court's decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which upheld the constitutionality of "separate but equal" facilities, provided legal justification for segregationist policies. These discriminatory laws persisted for decades, perpetuating racial inequality and injustice in the South. Duverger's Law is a principle in political science that suggests a strong tendency toward a two-party system in electoral democracies with single-member district plurality voting systems. This phenomenon occurs due to strategic voting behavior and the desire to maximize representation within a winner-takes-all electoral
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