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

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243 points rcarmo | 2 comments | 21 Oct 24 21:29 UTC | HN request time: 0.419s | 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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anonnon ◴[22 Oct 24 04:02 UTC] No.41911081[source]▶
This one seems deliberately difficult to answer correctly, even with the requisite civics knowledge:

> The President of the Senate gets his office

> a. by election by the people.

> b. by election by the Senate.

> c. by appointment by the President.

The Vice President is the President of the Senate, but the duties are typically exercised (save the tie-breaking vote) by the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, a Senator chosen by whichever party currently has a majority. It seems both a. and b. could be considered correct.

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1. PeterisP ◴[22 Oct 24 09:14 UTC] No.41912539[source]▶
The key issue and the whole purpose of that question is that also both a. and b. could be considered wrong.

If the person answers A, then the grader can state that this is correct if they like them, or assert that instead B is correct if they don't, so that the test can always provide the desired outcome.

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2. neongreen ◴[22 Oct 24 16:33 UTC] No.41916035[source]▶
The test comes with an answer key. See the second half of https://www.crmvet.org/info/la-littest2.pdf.