African American Literacy Tests

Even after the passing of the Fifteenth Amendment, African Americans were “disenfranchised in the South by intimidation and electoral trickery, including whites-only primaries, rigged literacy tests, and poll taxes” (Patterson 2011, p. 180). The Freedom Riders rode through the South, enduring harassment and imprisonment to encourage other African Americans to vote. Voter turnout in African American communities is greatly encouraged. Personally, coming from an African American family, I was strongly encouraged by my parents and grandparents to vote when I was of legal age. My family instilled the importance of voting in me at a very young age. Although voter turnout among African Americans is still fairly low, in the 2008 presidential election African Americans had the second highest voter turnout, behind non-Hispanic Caucasians (African Americans, n.d.). Race can influence voter turnout because with African Americans specifically, although rates are getting better, they are still not high.

Soon after passage of the Voting Rights Act, federal examiners were conducting voter registration, and black voter registration began a sharp increase. The cumulative effect of the Supreme Court’s decisions, Congress’ enactment of voting rights legislation, and the ongoing efforts of concerned private citizens and the Department of Justice, has been to restore the right to vote guaranteed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. The Voting Rights Act itself has been called the single most effective piece of civil rights legislation ever passed by

The emancipation proclamation was what seemed like the beginning of freedom for African Americans. African Americans fought hard and valiantly in the American Civil war and with the Unions win freedom and peace for blacks seemed to be assured. As most people would quote," Freedom isn 't free." It almost always has a cost. Africans Americans since the origin of this country have literally laid down their lives for the cost of freedom and opportunity in the US. One of the most coveted freedom 's both past and present is the right to suffrage. My paper discusses the many factors leading to and the trials and tribulations involving black 's right to vote. In this paper, I will discuss the constitutional amendments as well as the landmark supreme court cases that affected both the lives and voting rights of African Americans during the time period of 1865 through 1900.

Throughout America’s history the franchise has been withheld from different groups. This has been possible due to weakly written laws that do not provide adequate protections. In 1965 PL 89-110 was passed, this law, commonly known as the Voting Rights Act of 1965, finally provided real protections for minorities living in southern states. In recent years the language of the law was modified within the Supreme Court to take away the law’s primary power. In the following mock Congressional testimony we will go back to 1848, 13 years before the American Civil War, and provide evidence of why a law like PL 89-110 is necessary and commendable.

Nearly 100 years after the 15th amendment was ratified, vast disparities and blatant discrimination in voting process and practice were still pervasive, particularly in certain southern states like Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) was enacted by congress to address this enduring inequity. Section 5 of the VRA requires that states meeting criteria set out in section 4(b) of the act, must obtain federal “preclearance” before enacting any laws that affect voting. Section 4(b) provides the conditions for the preclearance requirement as state or jurisdictions where less than 50% of minorities were registered to vote in 1964.

The right to vote for African American became difficult during the time because the northern didn’t want to consider the blacks as equal to the society. As Frederick Douglass, has once stated “Slavery is not abolished until the black man has the ballot.” African American fought their way to gain their right to vote is by coming together, free blacks and emancipated slaves, to create parades, petition drives to demand, and to organize their own “freedom ballots.” As a free African American, they except the same respect as the whites and nothing

“The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting.” In the 1880’s poll taxes and literacy requirements that afterward advocated African Americans to vote. Meanwhile Klan violence frightens from police and employers, blacks were still “protesting”about voting rights. As a result, there were over two dozen blacks serving in state congress across some

One Social change during the late 1800s was the emancipation of slaves. For Example, in document 2, it is stated "Liberty came to the freemen of the United States not in mercy, but in wrath, not by, moral choice but by military necessity, not by generous action of the people among whom they were to live, and whose good-will was essential to success...., but by strangers, feigners, invaders, trespassers, aliens, and enemies. " This example demonstrates that the emancipation was forced and had moral value to the decision that made African-American people's lives difficult and cruel from racist actions and disadvantages. One example of a racial discrimination action was the Jim crow Laws.

As said in PBS, “Literacy tests were used to keep people of color -- and, sometimes, poor whites -- from voting, and they were administered at the discretion of the officials in charge of voter registration” (The Rise and Fall of jim crow). They would give people that wanted rights a test on American history or laws If a black person went to take the test they would give them a harder test. Sometimes people trying ti gain rights could not even read in english. Also a lot of the blacks did not have a great education at the time so it made it extremely difficult for them. The Literacy test were unfair to some people that wanted

Most responses toward the new idea of being slavery-free in America were negative. While organizations like the Freedmen’s Bureau emerged, so did organizations like the Ku Klux Klan. The KKK was a white supremacist group that threatened and lynched black voters. They were a secret group that terrorized African American and tried to stop blacks from having civil rights. Also, Southern governments found gaps in the Reconstruction Amendments and were able to come up with obstacles used to prevent blacks from voting. States had literacy tests, poll taxes, and a grandfather clause. Literacy tests required the reading and understanding of a section of the state’s constitution. Before Reconstruction, most blacks were slaves and it was illegal for slaves to learn how to read and write. Poll taxes prevented blacks from voting because most were poor sharecroppers or tenant farmers. They had just left slavery and were out on their own trying to find jobs. The grandfather clause allowed those whose fathers and grandfathers who voted on January 1, 1867 to vote. Because the civil war just ended and blacks recently won their freedom, their fathers and grandfathers had never voted in an election. No black in the South has voted back

Throughout the semester we have touched upon many instances for which the legal history of America effects the life of a black America, especially in “We Shall Overcome” Alexander Tsesis takes on the task of looking at civil rights through the “lens of legal history’. “The Ballot or The Bullet” displays the political message that the ‘ballot’ is freedom, and thus power through the freedom to vote. Malcom X hounds in on the political idea that the white man preys on the black man for votes, but then allows filibustering to happen in the Senate so nothing gets passed to promote equality for black Americans. Alexander writes frequently through the book how skewed politics become for blacks once their vote is legalized. That although, they can

African-Americans may sometimes wonder at the contradictory facts about their history presented in many standard history texts. These texts state that blacks were given the right to vote in 1870, yet the same texts will acknowledge that this right did not really exist for African-Americans until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

The goal of the 1957 Civil Rights Act was to ensure that all Americans could exercise their right to vote. By 1957, only about 20% of African Americans were registered to vote. Despite comprising the majority population in numerous counties and Congressional districts in the South, most blacks had been effectively disfranchised by discriminatory voter registration rules and laws in those states since the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Civil rights organizations had collected evidence of discriminatory practices, such as administration of literacy and comprehension tests, poll taxes and other means. While the states had the right to establish rules for voter registration and elections, the federal government found an oversight role in ensuring

The Voting Rights Act 42 U.S.C. §§ 1973 et seq., decision is important regarding the laws governing voting rights and their relationship to minority voters. Its implication and effects however does not end within the legal realms and dimensions but continues through to society, culture, and human rights. The Voting Rights Act initially established in 1965 under Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration protected “racial minorities” from biased voting practices. It was a huge stride in the civil rights movement and a victory over harmful, archaic, and biased voting practices and traditions.

The authors discuss that one way African Americans have been harmed through high-stakes testing and standardized assessments is through limited improvement in test scores and dropout rates. Although some African American students may be receiving a quality education because they are reading at or above grade level and have proficient math skills, there still remains a countless number of African Americans who are at the same level and receiving a quality education (Thompson & Allen, 2012). Dropout rates once proved that African American students were not receiving a fair quality education; however, today, the dropout rate indicates that Black and White achievement gap has narrowed over time and achievement scores have increased, too many African Americans are still receiving a substandard education (Thompson & Allen, 2012).