Black Disenfranchisement

The main device that was used to disenfranchise black people from voting was the infamous literacy test which exploited the loopholes of the 14th and 15th amendments. Literacy tests are “verbal and written tests that issued to blacks (and poor white people) and were required to pass before being allowed to vote” (Jones and Williams 2018; n.p.). Literacy tests also took advantage on the fact that black people had either limited or no access to formal education due to segregation, which prevented them to learn how to read and write. The “anti-literacy” movement made literacy among enslaved blacks illegal as early as 1740, and criminalized any slave who even attempted to read or write. Literacy was made illegal among slaves because “literacy among slave would expose slavery” (Jones and Williams 2018; n.p) and the slave masters knew this. Voting for black people proved to be dangerous and forbidden because once a black man or woman attempted to vote, it went public and they were subjected to racial violence by disapproving white people. They also risked losing their jobs if their employers found out about them voting.

The way literacy tests worked is that it required black voters to “prove a certain level of proficiency in reading, writing, and comprehension”. In the article Technologies of Disenfranchisement: Literacy Tests and Black Voters in the U.S from 1890-1965 by Natasha N. Jones and Miriam F. Williams, the two authors attempted to analyze an actual literacy test during that era. Since no actual copies of literacy tests exist anymore, there are mimicries of literacy tests. The document they examined mimicked an Alabama literacy test from 1965. The literacy test took form as a four paged application which had registration, a questionnaire, and an oath.

Jones, Natasha N, and Miriam F Williams. “Technologies of Disenfranchisement: Literacy Tests and Black Voters in the US from 1890 to 1965.” Technical Communication Online: Journal for the Society for Technical Communication, Society for Technical Communication, 4 Nov. 2018, www.stc.org/techcomm/2018/11/08/technologies-of-disenfranchisement-literacy-tests-and-black-voters-in-the-us-from-1890-to-1965/.