Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A literacy test assesses a person's literacy skills: their ability to read and write. Literacy tests have been administered by various governments, particularly to immigrants. Between the 1850s [1] and 1960s, literacy tests were used as an effective tool for disenfranchising African Americans in the Southern United States.
Download as PDF; Printable version; In other projects ... the Voting Rights Act made some literacy tests illegal. ... Morgan is a prime example of judicial deference ...
In Alabama, for example, its 1901 constitution restricted the franchise for poor whites as well as blacks. It contained requirements for payment of cumulative poll taxes, completion of literacy tests, and increased residency at state, county and precinct levels, effectively disenfranchising tens of thousands of poor whites as well as most ...
The term "test or device" is defined as literacy tests, educational or knowledge requirements, proof of good moral character, and requirements that a person be vouched for when voting. [123] Before the Act's enactment, these devices were the primary tools used by jurisdictions to prevent racial minorities from voting. [124]
The literacy test was administered by the voting registrar; in practice, they were white Democrats. Provisions in the constitution also included a grandfather clause, which provided a loophole to enable illiterate whites to register to vote. It said that "Any citizen who was a voter on January 1, 1867, or his son or grandson, or any person ...
Voting in the 1972 Presidential Primary Election in Birmingham, Alabama. 1970. Alaska ends the use of literacy tests. [48] Native Americans who live on reservations in Colorado are first allowed to vote in the state. [54] 1971. Adults aged 18 through 21 are granted the right to vote by the Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Case history; Prior: Appeal from the Supreme Court of North Carolina: Subsequent: Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibited use of literacy tests: Holding; A State may use a literacy test as a qualification for voters provided it is applied equally to all and is not intended to discriminate; it is part of its broad powers to determine the conditions under which the right of suffrage may be exercised.
United States, 238 U.S. 347 (1915), was a United States Supreme Court decision that found certain grandfather clause exemptions to literacy tests for voting rights to be unconstitutional. Though these grandfather clauses were superficially race-neutral, they were designed to protect the voting rights of illiterate white voters while ...