Literacy Testing History

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Recommended: The Voting Rights Act of 1965 cram

Jacqueline Hyungmin Kim
Sara Parrott
Going Global
October 30th, 2017

The history of literacy tests for voter registration
In today’s society, most citizens of the united states register to vote without any regard to race of color. However, prior to passage of the federal voting rights act in 1965, southern states disenfranchised nonwhites in many ways.
A literacy test is a tool that measures one’s proficiency in reading and writing. In the 19th century, various forms of literacy tests were used in the voter registration process in the Southern States of United states. It was used in a way to prevent certain groups of people, mostly people of color, and sometimes, poor whites, from exercising their right to vote.
The formal literacy tests were first introduced in 1890s, and was suspended in the 1960s, with the voter rights act in 1965. These tests that worked to disenfranchise racial minorities because people who can’t prove certain level of education had to take this test and people of color were deprived of education due to the segregation in school.
The contents of the literacy test are a mix of trivia questions regarding the civic procedure and citizenship, according to source(cite). Take Alabama literacy test from 1965 for example. 68 questions consist of mostly sentence filling questions and occasional multiple …show more content…

For example, Louisiana literacy test’s questions are worded unclearly, with the intention to make it unanswerable. The time limit for this test was 10 minutes and a single wrong answer meant failing the test. On top of this, the ultimate judge was the white registrar, so it was impossible for African Americans to pass the test and register to vote. Even after passing the literacy test, there were other barriers that prevented blacks from voting. A more general use of literacy test refers to poll tax, police intimidation, economic retaliation and

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