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

(www.openculture.com)
243 points rcarmo | 2 comments | 21 Oct 24 21:29 UTC | HN request time: 0.003s | 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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tptacek ◴[21 Oct 24 23:47 UTC] No.41909737[source]▶
This is super interesting. The Slate author who originally posted the Tangipahoa test followed up, with a bunch of extra information, and a pointer to a '63 Louisiana District Court case ruling the constitutional interpretation test you linked to unconstitutional:

https://web.archive.org/web/20161105050044/http://www.laed.u...

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nneonneo ◴[21 Oct 24 23:56 UTC] No.41909793[source]▶
The original Slate article: https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/06/voting-rights-and-t...

The follow-up, in which the author chronicles their (unsuccessful) search for an original: https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/07/louisiana-literacy-....

The follow-up explicitly notes that the word-processed version shown in the original article is a modern update; a typewritten version that is supposedly closer to the original is shown at the bottom of that article (and available at https://web.archive.org/web/20160615084237/http://msmcdushis...), although the provenance of this version is also unclear ("McDonald reports that she received the test, along with another literacy test from Alabama, from a fellow teacher, who had been using them in the classroom for years but didn’t remember where they came from.")

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tptacek ◴[22 Oct 24 00:01 UTC] No.41909830[source]▶
Right, and you'd assume that if it was widely delivered in Louisiana, there'd be contemporaneous records; what that test is doing is pretty obvious.
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bryanrasmussen ◴[22 Oct 24 12:13 UTC] No.41913487[source]▶
since what that test was doing was trying to illegally deprive black people of their right to vote I'd think they'd try to keep it as hidden as possible, which is what I would recommend one do when breaking the law.
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woooooo ◴[22 Oct 24 12:18 UTC] No.41913513[source]▶
How hidden can you keep a test that many thousands of voters take?
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1. biorach ◴[22 Oct 24 14:36 UTC] No.41914743[source]▶
> I certainly hope you're not so naive

There is absolutely no need to take this tone, especially seeing as the person you are replying to is clearly in good faith.

2. lokar ◴[22 Oct 24 14:48 UTC] No.41914854[source]▶
If there is a credible threat of retaliation (violence, employment, housing) for even trying to vote, then this is very effective. Why take a big risk if you won’t get to vote anyway? This way you don’t actually have to give the test very often, everyone quickly figures out the “rules” and falls into line.