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

(www.openculture.com)
255 points rcarmo | 1 comments | 21 Oct 24 21:29 UTC | HN request time: 0.201s | 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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kccqzy ◴[22 Oct 24 14:32 UTC] No.41914699[source]▶
I like the abstract idea of literacy tests but then I also think some questions in this particular literacy test is unnecessarily tricky. And some could be considered historical trivia.

The commerce question is supposed to be answered by reading the constitution by itself, not by reading SCOTUS opinions. So this is different from actual constitutional scholars. That makes this question unsuitable for literacy tests.

At a minimum: I think people should be given ample time to complete a literacy test, at a date and time chosen by the test taker, and also have multiple attempts available. And for the content of the test, they should have actual elementary school students attempt it to make sure it isn't too difficult.

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giraffe_lady ◴[22 Oct 24 15:56 UTC] No.41915610[source]▶
A literacy test in which language?
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1. kccqzy ◴[22 Oct 24 18:22 UTC] No.41917139[source]▶
All languages as long as a translator could be found and hired by the government. Of course the cost of hiring the translator and doing the translation should be borne by the government.

A multi-language literacy test also forces the test writer to write questions that are language agnostic. No more things like "spell this word" or "circle the longest word" as seen in the article.