North Carolina adopted a new suffrage article in 1900 which is much simpler than those just described. It requires two years' residence in the State, one in the county, and the payment of poll tax before the 1st of May in the election year. A uniform educational qualification is laid down, but the "permanent roll" is also included. No "male person who was on January 1, 1867, or at any other time prior thereto, entitled to vote under the laws of any State in the United States, wherein he then resided, and no lineal descendant of any such person shall be denied the right to register and vote at any election in the State by reason of his failure to possess the educational qualifications herein prescribed: Provided he shall have registered in accordance with the terms of this section prior to December 1, 1908." In other words, any white illiterate thirteen years old or over when the amendment was adopted would not be deprived of his vote because of the lack of educational qualifications. No other State had given so long a time as this. The "grandfather clause" here was shrewdly drawn. Free negroes voted in North Carolina until 1835, and under the terms of the clause any negro who could prove descent from a negro voter could not be debarred because of illiteracy. Negroes voted in a few States in 1867, and they or their descendants were exempt from the educational test. Of course the number of these was negligible, and the clause accomplished precisely what it was intended to do--that is, it disfranchised a large proportion of the negroes and yet allowed the whites to vote. The extension of the time of registration until 1908, eight years after the amendment was adopted and six after it went into effect, made the disfranchisement of any considerable number of whites impossible.