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Literacy as a requirement for voting
The term literacy test or literacy requirement refers to the government practice of testing the literacy of potential citizens at both the federal level and state level. The test assessed a voter's ability to read and write or to read and understand any section of the state or federal constitutions.[1]
Background
Prior to the passage of the federal Voting Rights Act in 1965, several southern and western states maintained voter registration procedures whose primary purpose was to deny the vote to Black, Latino, and Native American citizens. This process, often referred to as a literacy test, was rooted in Jim Crow laws and involved more than a reading examination.[2]
The federal government first employed literacy tests as part of the immigration process in 1917. Southern state legislatures employed literacy tests as part of the voter registration process as early as the late nineteenth century.[3]
As adopted by a number of southern states, the literacy test was used to disfranchise literate southern Blacks while allowing illiterate southern whites to vote. The literacy test, combined with other discriminatory requirements, effectively disfranchised the majority of Black citizens in the South from the 1890s until the 1960s. Southern states stopped using the literacy test due to federal legislation in the 1960s.[4]
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 provided that literacy tests—when used as a qualification for voting in federal elections—be administered in writing and only to persons who had not completed six years of formal education. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 suspended the use of literacy tests in all states or political subdivisions in which less than 50 percent of the voting-age residents were registered as of November 1, 1964, or had voted in the 1964 presidential election. In a series of cases, the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the legislation and restricted the use of literacy tests to non-English-speaking citizens. Since the passage of the civil rights legislation of the 1960s, Black voter registration in the South has increased.[5]
See also
External links
- Department of Justice, "Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act"
- PBS, "The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow"
- Slate.com, "Take the Impossible Literacy Test Louisiana Gave Black Voters in the 1960s"
- Buzzfeed, "Could You Pass The Literacy Test Given To Black Voters In The 1960s?"
Footnotes
- ↑ U.S. Legal.com, "Literacy Test Law," accessed March 28, 2014
- ↑ CRMVET.ord, "Voting Rights: Are You "Qualified" to Vote? Take a "Literacy Test" to Find Out," accessed March 28, 2014
- ↑ U.S. Immigration Legislation Online, "1917 Immigration act," accessed March 28, 2014
- ↑ Smithsonian, "White Only: Jim Crow in America," accessed March 28, 2014
- ↑ Department of Justice, "Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act," accessed March 28, 2014
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