Voting and citizenship rights were withheld from people of color until the mid-twentieth century

Evidence

Before the Civil War, “free persons of color” were stripped of their right to vote—the key to citizenship status —in many states. The extension of eligibility to all racial groups has been slow indeed. Japanese, for example, could become naturalized citizens only after the passage of the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952. — Michael Omi, Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 144

Categorization

• XREF: Supplies concrete legal-history dates that corroborate the vault’s general claims about state-enforced racial exclusion by voting law.