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A near impossible literacy test Louisiana used to suppress the black vote

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243 points rcarmo | 5 comments | 21 Oct 24 21:29 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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nneonneo ◴[21 Oct 24 23:35 UTC] No.41909665[source]▶
Note: there are questions about this test's authenticity. Per a note on https://www.crmvet.org/info/la-test.htm:

> [NOTE: At one time we also displayed a "brain-twister" type literacy test with questions like "Spell backwards, forwards" that may (or may not) have been used during the summer of 1964 in Tangipahoa Parish (and possibly elsewhere) in Louisiana. We removed it because we could not corroborate its authenticity, and in any case it was not representative of the Louisiana tests in broad use during the 1950s and '60s.]

Each parish in Louisiana implemented their own literacy tests, which means that there wasn't really much uniformity in the process. Another (maybe more typical) test: https://www.crmvet.org/info/la-littest2.pdf

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InvaderFizz ◴[21 Oct 24 23:44 UTC] No.41909723[source]▶
That literacy test seems reasonable. But I do note that this particular one must predate 1942.

One of the questions is "Congress cannot regulate commerce ..." and the answer is within a state. Which I agree with, but SCOTUS does not (Wickard v Filburn, 1942).

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1. VariousPrograms ◴[22 Oct 24 00:17 UTC] No.41909921[source]▶
It's definitely not reasonable. You shouldn't lose your right to vote because you don't know which office of government pays USPS mail carriers or the term length of US judges. There are lots of likely-disqualifiers mixed in with the gimmes like "Who is the first president?".
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2. whaaaaat ◴[22 Oct 24 04:17 UTC] No.41911144[source]▶
Agreed. This test is not reasonable.

Even "who is the first president" knowledge shouldn't be a bar to voting. Do you think they offered this literacy test in the native languages of all taking it? Do you think all people in the US had the opportunity to learn, in their language, the history of the country?

At the time there were systemic barriers to education that meant that many folk were probably not even taught who the first president was. Let alone how old you have to be to be president.

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3. w0de0 ◴[22 Oct 24 12:00 UTC] No.41913400[source]▶
Few people know that the first president was Peyton Randolph.
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4. cafard ◴[22 Oct 24 12:39 UTC] No.41913628[source]▶
Not John Hanson?
5. butlike ◴[22 Oct 24 15:41 UTC] No.41915423[source]▶
There's also a few typographical issues I noticed that might have been an issue for uneducated folk. For instance, in one question, government is written as "governm ent" What's a government ENT?