Alabama Literacy Test: Registrar Abuse, Selma, and the VRA

The Alabama literacy test was a voter registration requirement used from the early 1900s until 1965 that forced applicants to read, transcribe, and answer questions about the state or federal constitution in front of a county registrar whose judgment could not be appealed. On paper it screened for literacy. In practice, registrars used it to keep Black Alabamians off the voter rolls while waving white applicants through, and it was abolished by the Voting Rights Act of 1965.¹

What the Test Required

By its final years, the test came in several parts. In Part A, the applicant read a section of the Alabama Constitution aloud from a binder held by the registrar, who chose the section. The registrar marked every word deemed mispronounced, and in some counties the applicant then had to explain the section orally to the registrar’s satisfaction.²

A transcription section required the applicant to write out a passage of the Constitution. Parts B and C were two sets of four written questions each on constitutional knowledge and general government topics, which Governor George Wallace described as reading comprehension questions and tests of general knowledge of the government.³

The registrar decided whether the applicant was literate or illiterate, and that decision was final. There was no appeal.² Procedures varied between counties and even between days in the same county, depending on the registrar and the race of the person in front of them.⁴

The test’s raw difficulty is easy to underestimate. When 80 college students at Lebanon Valley College in Pennsylvania took the Alabama test in an experiment, every one of them failed.³

How Registrars Used It to Exclude Black Voters

The discrimination was engineered into the choices the registrar got to make. White applicants were typically assigned short, simple provisions, like Section 20, a single sentence about imprisonment for debt. Black applicants received dense, convoluted passages on subjects like school funding formulas and tax rates.²

The transcription section worked the same way. White applicants were generally allowed to copy from the text in front of them. Black applicants were forced to take dictation from a registrar who often mumbled.² Many white applicants were not required to take the test at all, or were passed automatically when they did. Black applicants were made to sit for it regardless of education, and college-educated Black citizens were routinely failed.⁴

To keep applicants from preparing, the Alabama Supreme Court introduced multiple versions of the exam. By 1964, 100 different versions were in use, refined three times between 1964 and 1965.³ Grandfather-style exemptions for those who had voted before further tilted the odds toward white applicants.

The registration numbers show what the system produced. In Macon County, 97.3 percent of eligible white residents were registered, compared to 7.8 percent of eligible Black residents.⁵ In Dallas County, home to Selma, only 320 of more than 15,000 eligible Black voters were registered, about 2.1 percent. In Lowndes and Wilcox Counties, not a single African American was on the rolls.⁶

Where the Test Came From

Alabama’s 1901 constitutional convention in Montgomery built the framework the test would later operate inside. None of the convention’s delegates were African American. Convention president John B. Knox stated the goal in his opening address: “And what is it that we want to do? Why, it is, within the limits imposed by the Federal Constitution, to establish white supremacy in this State.”⁷

Article VIII set up a two-phase system. A temporary plan running through late 1902 included a “fighting grandfather” clause that exempted male descendants of Confederate soldiers and allowed registrars to enroll people of “good character” who understood the “duties and obligations of citizenship.” People who registered under that plan got lifetime registration. The permanent plan, effective January 1903, required applicants to read and write any article of the U.S. Constitution, show they had worked for the previous twelve months, and own property worth $300 or more (or forty acres) with taxes paid. A cumulative poll tax ran alongside.⁷

The effect was immediate. Roughly 100,000 African Americans were registered to vote in Alabama in 1900. By 1908, the number was 3,742.³

The Legal Challenges Before 1965

The Boswell Amendment and Davis v. Schnell

After the Supreme Court struck down white-only primaries in Smith v. Allwright in 1944, Alabama responded with the Boswell Amendment in 1946. Introduced by Geneva County representative Edward Calhoun “Bud” Boswell, it required prospective voters to “understand and explain” any section of the U.S. Constitution to the registrar’s satisfaction. The legislature passed it easily, and 54 percent of voters approved it in November 1946.⁸

A federal lawsuit followed in March 1948. On January 7, 1949, a three-judge U.S. District Court panel declared the amendment unconstitutional, finding it deliberately ambiguous and designed to circumvent Smith v. Allwright. The Supreme Court affirmed in March 1949. The decision in Davis v. Schnell held that the legislative history disclosed a clear intent to disenfranchise Black voters in violation of the Fifteenth Amendment.⁹ In 1951, the legislature replaced it with a new voter qualification law requiring literacy, “good character,” and a loyalty oath, and that framework lasted until 1965.⁸

Lassiter v. Northampton County

In 1959, the Supreme Court complicated things. In Lassiter v. Northampton County Board of Elections, a unanimous Court upheld North Carolina’s literacy test on its face. Justice Douglas wrote that states could require voters to be literate as long as the test was applied without discrimination.¹⁰ The Court distinguished the case from Davis v. Schnell, noting that Alabama’s earlier test had been struck down because the “great discretion” vested in registrars made it a “calculated scheme” for racial discrimination. States could keep literacy tests on the books; they simply had to avoid discriminatory language in the statute itself, even as the test was administered in flagrantly discriminatory ways.

United States v. Alabama

The Department of Justice sued the Macon County Board of Registrars under the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Judge Frank M. Johnson Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama initially ruled for the county on a technical defect in who could be sued.⁵ After the Civil Rights Act of 1960 expanded federal authority, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that DOJ could sue the state itself.

Back before Judge Johnson, the record laid the discrimination bare. In March 1961, Johnson documented that registrars had delayed Black applicants while processing white applicants promptly, required Black applicants to write longer constitutional passages while letting white applicants skip the writing section entirely, rejected Black applicants for trivial errors while overlooking identical mistakes from white applicants, and failed to notify Black applicants of their application status. He issued a permanent injunction ordering the state to stop the discriminatory practices and register eligible Black voters. The Fifth Circuit affirmed in 1962.¹¹

Selma and the Push That Finished It

The test became the immediate target of the civil rights campaign in Selma. Applicants at the Dallas County Courthouse had to select a test at random from a notebook of 100 versions and then read portions of the Constitution aloud and write from dictation. The Dallas County Voters League, led by figures including Samuel and Amelia Boynton, Dr. F.D. Reese, and Marie Foster, ran citizenship classes to help applicants prepare.¹²

In July 1964, Circuit Judge James Hare issued an injunction forbidding five or more people from gathering on the streets to discuss voting rights, effectively freezing the movement. In December 1964, Reese invited Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to Selma. A large meeting at Brown Chapel AME Church on January 2, 1965, broke the injunction, and protests resumed.¹²

On March 7, 1965, roughly 600 marchers set out from Selma toward Montgomery. Alabama state troopers and local deputies attacked them with billy clubs and tear gas on the far side of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Television footage of Bloody Sunday reached a national audience. A symbolic second march on March 9 turned around at the bridge. A third march began on March 21 with more than 1,000 participants under Army and National Guard protection ordered by President Lyndon B. Johnson.¹² On March 15, Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress and called for voting rights legislation. He signed the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965.¹

How the Voting Rights Act Ended Literacy Tests

Section 4(a) of the Voting Rights Act outlawed the use of any “test or device” as a prerequisite for voting in covered jurisdictions. The Act defined “test or device” broadly: any requirement that a person demonstrate the ability to read, write, understand, or interpret any matter; demonstrate educational achievement; possess “good moral character”; or prove qualifications through the voucher of registered voters.¹

Section 4(b) supplied a coverage formula: states and counties that had used a test or device as of November 1, 1964, and where less than 50 percent of voting-age residents were registered or voted in the 1964 presidential election. Alabama was covered. Section 5 required covered jurisdictions to obtain federal preclearance before changing any voting practice, and Section 6 let federal examiners register voters directly.¹

The original law suspended literacy tests only in covered jurisdictions. In 1970, Congress extended the suspension nationwide for five years, and the Supreme Court unanimously upheld that in Oregon v. Mitchell, 400 U.S. 112.¹³ Congress made the ban permanent in 1975.¹⁴

The registration numbers moved fast. In 1964, only 23 percent of eligible African Americans in Alabama were registered, fewer than 93,000 people. Within two years, that number rose to more than 248,000, or 51.2 percent of the eligible Black population. Federal officials assisted roughly 60,000 registrations, including 19,000 in Jefferson County and 9,000 in Montgomery County. The counties where suppression had been most complete changed most sharply: Lowndes County went from zero registered Black voters to 59.1 percent by 1967, Wilcox County from zero to 62.1 percent, and Dallas County from 320 to nearly 9,000.⁶

Why the Test Is Still Shown to Students

The 1965 Alabama test is preserved and taught as a document. The Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State University archives a copy and makes it accessible as a historical resource.³ PBS NewsHour Classroom maintains a lesson plan in which high school students take the test, attempt to grade it, and discuss what passing under the conditions Black applicants faced would have required.¹⁵

Scholars have described literacy tests as a “technology of disenfranchisement” whose “objective and neutral” technical style masked an intentional design to “oppress and marginalize” Black voters.¹⁶ The Alabama version, with its registrar-controlled difficulty, its mumbled dictation, and its 100 rotating versions, is one of the most documented examples of how a nominally race-neutral law was used as an instrument of racial control.

1
National Archives. Voting Rights Act
2
Civil Rights Movement Archive. Alabama Literacy Test
3
Jim Crow Museum, Ferris State University. The 1965 Alabama Literacy Test
4
Civil Rights Movement Archive. Literacy Tests and Voter Applications
5
Encyclopedia of Alabama. United States v. Alabama
6
Encyclopedia of Alabama. Voting Rights Act of 1965 in Alabama
7
University of Alabama School of Law Library. Alabama’s 1901 Constitution: Instrument of Power
8
Encyclopedia of Alabama. Boswell Amendment
9
Cornell Law Institute. Exclusion From Primaries and Literacy Tests
10
Justia. Lassiter v. Northampton County Board of Elections, 360 U.S. 45
11
Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. United States v. Alabama
12
National Park Service. Teaching With Historic Places – Selma
13
Justia. Oregon v. Mitchell, 400 U.S. 112
14
U.S. Congress. H.R. 6219 – 94th Congress
15
PBS NewsHour Classroom. Constitution Day: The 1965 Alabama Literacy Test
16
JSTOR. Literacy Tests as a Technology of Disenfranchisement