Literacy test
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A literacy test, in a strict sense, is a test designed to determine one's ability to read and write a given language. The term is often used, however, to refer to a test given to determine one's eligibility to vote. Literacy tests have also been used as a means to restrict immigration. The United States adopted a policy of administering a literacy test upon arrival in 1917 in order to filter out unskilled labor. The test was first proposed to Congress in 1897 and was declined four times before ratification. The high demand for cheap, unskilled, immigrant labor made the bill very difficult to pass in its early stages. But by 1917, the United States' views on immigration had changed and the literacy tests merely prefaced the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and the Immigration Act of 1924.
Literacy requirements for voting are almost as old as the concept of voting is itself. The theoretical basis for them was that illiterate persons were not sufficiently informed about the candidates and issues involved to be able to make a truly informed decision. In practice, however, the literacy requirement was often used to prevent those determined by the ruling class to be undesirable, such as the poor, racial and ethnic minorities, and other groups that it wished to see disenfranchised, from voting.
The literacy test became of prime importance when the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified in the wake of the American Civil War. This amendment forbade any state from forbidding any male citizen aged twenty-one or over from voting on the basis of race. It did not, however, prevent the implementation of other qualifications for voting. Since few whites in the Southern United States in that era desired blacks to vote, they developed the "literacy test", which was usually a virtually impossible test on American government which would be given only to blacks. Whites were often allowed to vote even if they were illiterate, sometimes by the invocation of a grandfather clause which stated that literacy requirements could be waived if a potential voter's grandfather had been a qualified voter, a virtual impossibility for blacks of that era.
Literacy tests for voting were banned by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and now laws require the printing of ballots in languages other than English in areas where there are high concentrations of non-English-speaking voters, and arrangements are made to assist the illiterate in voting. Literacy tests for voting in the United States thus no longer exist. However, the naturalization process in the United States still requires a literacy test.
