Literacy Test

LITERACY TESTS WERE voting qualifications that required a person to prove the ability to read and write in order to be eligible to vote. Connecticut enacted the first literacy tests in 1855, requiring persons to be able to read any article ofthe U.S. Constitution or any section of a state statute. Persons eligible to vote prior to 1855 were exempted from the requirement. The stated justification for these tests was that they helped to ensure that only informed, knowledgeable, and educated individuals were eligible to vote. But given the unjustified exemption for prior voters, the voting qualifications were more directed at keeping newly-arrived, working-class immigrants from voting. After the Civil War, the number of states requiring literacy tests for voters increased substantially, primarily in the south. These tests had the purpose of disfranchising newly eligible African-American voters. To placate opposition to these tests from illiterate whites, several southern states passed grandfather clauses that exempted persons, or descendants of persons, who were eligible to vote in an election prior to the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment. As very few African Americans were eligible to vote in southern states prior to the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, they were not entitled to this exemption.

The number of eligible black voters in the south dramatically declined at the beginning ofthe 20th century, due, in part, to the enactment of literacy tests and other voting qualifications. For example, in Louisiana, where literacy tests were enacted in 1898, the number of black voters dropped from 130,000 in 1896 to 5,320 in 1900. In 1915, the Supreme Court finally intervened and declared grandfather clauses unconstitutional, which meant that all persons, both African American and white, would be subject to literacy tests. This decision had little effect on the disparity between the number of blacks and whites registered to vote. Voting registrars simply administered the tests in a discriminatory manner. For example, African Americans were given more difficult provisions to read and write or interpret. The most trivial of errors subjected African Americans to failure, while their white counterparts who made similar errors were assured passage. Illiterate whites received assistance that registrars denied to blacks.

These tests and their discriminatory administration acted as an impediment to African-American voting in the south through the first half of the 20th century. It was [Page 376]not until the passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 that efforts were made by the federal government, through the Department of Justice, to file suits and seek injunctions against the discriminatory administration of these tests. Although a Supreme Court challenge to the constitutionality of literacy tests under the Fourteenth Amendment failed in 1960, a movement towards addressing literacy tests more broadly gained traction in Congress. In 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act (VRA), which temporarily suspended literacy tests for five years in states with a history of discrimination. The effect of the suspension of literacy tests in the south was dramatic. In six southern states, African-American voter registration increased by more than 1.1 million between 1964 and 1972.

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