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What did the literacy tests do?
A literacy test assesses a person’s literacy skills: their ability to read and write. In the United States, between the 1850s and 1960s, literacy tests were administered to prospective voters, and this had the effect of disenfranchising African Americans and others with diminished access to education.
What was the original purpose of literacy tests?
From the 1890s to the 1960s, many state governments in the Southern United States administered literacy tests to prospective voters, purportedly to test their literacy in order to vote. In practice, these tests were intended to disenfranchise racial minorities and others deemed problematic by the ruling party.
What was the point of the literacy test?
Description. After the Civil War, many states enacted literacy tests as a voting requirement. The purpose was to exclude persons with minimal literacy, in particular, poor African Americans in the South, from voting.
Why was the Voting Rights Act of 1965 so important?
It outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting. This “act to enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution” was signed into law 95 years after the amendment was ratified.
Who banned literacy tests?
Literacy tests were banned by the Fifteenth Amendment. the Twenty-fourth Amendment. the Civil Rights Act of 1964. the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Literacy tests were banned by the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
What was the purpose of these literacy tests?
Beginning in the 19th century, literacy tests were used in the voter registration process in southern states of the U.S. with the intent to disenfranchise Black voters. In 1917, with the passing of the Immigration Act, literacy tests were also included in the U.S. immigration process, and they are still used today.
What was literacy tests during Reconstruction?
HISTORY OF RECONSTRUCTION AND JIM CROW ERA. Literacy tests were introduced into the voting process in the South with the Jim Crow laws. Jim Crow laws were state and local laws and statutes enacted by southern and border states in the late 1870s to deny African Americans the right to vote in the South following Reconstruction (1865-1877).