Calling the electoral poll tests “literacy tests” is quite euphemistic when you see one of these “tests.” They were simply, most of them, brainteasers that often had no correct answers. The time limit was always ridiculously short. And “passing” almost always required a 100% score-- impossible, since many of the answers had more than one right answer. Obviously, white people, of any literacy level, never had to take the test.
[Page 1 of 3, and this is a 10-minute test that requires 100% passing grade.]
With very first question:
1. Draw a line around the number or letter of this sentence.
I’m willing to bet that either drawing a line around (1) or (D) was “correct.” Which means if you select (1) or (D) you lose, because when you do, (D) and (1), respectively, will be the expected “answer.” And, in any case, if you had drawn a line under it or cross it out (instead of “drawing a line around it”), you’d be penalized for that.
Obviously, one of the goals of the test wasn’t just to exclude, but to humiliate and degrade the test taker, to “put them in their place” as second-class citizens. In the same manner that segregated facilities (of lesser quality, size, and cleanliness) were so designed.
It is truly amazing that they existed as they did up until the Voters Rights Act of 1965 and who knows how long this might have continued to exist? Since the VRA only passed because JFK was assassinated and the South was shamed by LBJ into letting it pass. If JFK had lived, civil rights mightve been stifled into the '70s. What a heritage.
