The term comes out of the American south where many states enacted laws to prevent African Americans from registering to vote. These states enacted voter registration laws that required registrants to pass literacy tests, own land, or other such strategies to create significant restrictions on men who may vote. But, because poor and illiterate white voters would also be barred from registering to vote under these laws, the laws included clauses that granted exemptions for any man whose grandfather was entitled to vote prior to the civil war. These clauses became known as “grandfather clauses” or “grandfathering.”