The Louisiana Literacy Test

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the Louisiana literacy test, which was implemented in the late 1800s in Louisiana. The paper explains that the federal government had given blacks the right to vote, but the state implemented an ingenious, yet sinister, literacy test to bar them from ever entering the polls. The paper claims that literacy tests had been used in several states as a means of disenfranchising a specific class of citizens. The Louisiana literacy test was specifically designed to keep blacks from voting and had little to nothing to do with actual literacy. The paper describes and examines the questions on the Louisiana literacy test, contending that they were worded in such a misleading and often ambiguous fashion that it was nearly impossible to answer them all correctly.

From the Paper:

"Imagine being a Louisiana black man in the late 1800s. Freedom had come, but at a price. Suffrage had come to the South, but begrudgingly so. The federal government had given blacks the right to vote, but the state implemented an ingenious, and yet sinister, literacy test to bar them from ever entering the polls. The Louisiana Literacy Test was the white man's last effort to keep the black man from voting. Literacy tests had been used in several states as a means of disenfranchising a specific class of citizens. The first literacy tests, in the United States, were used by Connecticut and Massachusetts, in 1855 and 1857 respectively. These tests were directed at disenfranchising foreign-born citizens. 17 additional states would adopt some type of literacy qualifications before 1924 (Spencer). One of the most infamous was the Louisiana Literacy Test."

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