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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.
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 ...
The Literacy Myth: Literacy and Social Structure in the Nineteenth Century City (Academic Press, 1979). Graff, Harvey J. ed. Literacy and social development in the West: A reader (Cambridge UP, 1981), scholarly studies of many countries; Guzzetti, Barbara, ed. Literacy in America: An Encyclopedia of History, Theory, and Practice (ABC-CLIO, 2002)
Williams v. Mississippi, 170 U.S. 213 (1898), is a United States Supreme Court case that reviewed provisions of the 1890 Mississippi constitution and its statutes that set requirements for voter registration, including poll tax, literacy tests, the grandfather clause, and the requirement that only registered voters could serve on juries.
The test was 30 questions and had to be completed in 10 minutes. One wrong answer resulted in failure. We took a 1964 Louisiana literacy test and failed spectacularly [Video]
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Many kept literacy tests in place as only the use of grandfather clauses had been struck down, the result being the only substantive change was poor whites as well as blacks were disenfranchised. After 23 years, the Supreme Court struck down the new Oklahoma statute in Lane v. Wilson. The Court ruled that the new statute still violated the ...
An eight-dollar head tax was imposed on immigrants over the age of 16 years as well as a literacy test; those seeking refuge from religious persecution were exempt. [16] 1921, 1924, and 1929 — Immigrant quotas were established in 1921 and became more restrictive over the next eight years.