Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act, which abolished literacy tests and other voter restrictions and authorized federal intervention against voter discrimination. The subsequent rise in black voter registration transformed politics in the South. In 2010, Shelby County, Alabama, challenged the ...
Because not everyone wants everyone to vote. This is perhaps unsurprising given historical examples of prohibitive measures, includingpoll taxesand “impossible”literacy tests. The U.S. Constitution and federal laws including the Voting Rights Act protect a person’s right to vote, though strict vo...
Kitchen, KatieWilliam & Mary Law Review
Literacy Tests Voting Rights Act Signed into Law Voter Turnout Rises in the South Changes to the Voting Rights Act The Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans fro...
Blatantly racist laws like poll taxes and literacy tests once made preclearance necessary, Barbour said. "But when you have to go hat-in-hand to Washington every time you want to move a polling place," then it's evolved into "federal harassment that's gone on way too long," he added....
Literacy test, exam for assessing a person’s ability to read and write. In addition to evaluating students in the classroom, literacy tests have historically been used by some countries to exclude people of a particular race or social class from voting
However, Southern states subsequently suppressed the black vote through intimidation and various other measures—such as poll taxes and literacy tests. The latter often required perfect scores and were frequently designed to be confusing; in one Louisiana test, the person was told to “Write every ...
“The phrase ‘grandfather clause’ originally referred to provisions adopted by some states after the Civil War in an effort to disenfranchise African-American voters by requiring voters to pass literacy tests or meet other significant qualifications, while exempting from such requirements those who ...
“I think what we’re seeing [are] modern-day form[s] of voter suppression that are still occurring, and while they are not as egregious or as overt as literacy tests or poll taxes, they are nevertheless decreasing participation,” said Rep. Terri Sewell, an Alabama Democrat. ...
literacy tests,grandfather clauses,whites-only primaries, and other measures disproportionately disqualified African Americans from voting. The result was that by the early 20th century nearly all African Americans were disfranchised. In the first half of the 20th century, several such measures were ...