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In the "Jim Crow" (segregated) south, white people did everything they could to prevent black people from voting, even after constitutional amendments gave them that right. One common trick was a so-called "literacy test"-- it was supposed to be proof the potential voter could read and write, but only blacks were asked to take it, and it wasn't really a literacy test at all-- rather than proving a person could read, the assigned text was usually something very difficult to understand, and could thus be used to disqualify the black voter. Often the test included a reading at the PhD-level; the goal was to make sure that the vast majority of blacks (who had received an adequate but certainly not college-level education) would be unable to correctly answer questions about what they had just been asked to read.

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9y ago

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