Reconstruction and Literacy Test?

[Marie & Garnet Shoup]

Ok folks, Je suis curious about something so I thought I'd ask for
opinions. In some other threads here and on soc.history.civil-war,
mention is made of the right of free blacks to vote if they could
demonstrate literacy (a test that apparently became harder and harder
as the years passed in many areas of the country). My question is
simple:

Was the literacy test a general requirement of the franchise or was it
just applied to blacks? Thank you.

Garnet (whose reconstruction library is virtually non-existent) Shoup
mgs...@comnet.ca Canada - the land with 2 months of summer
& 10 months of bad sledding.

[Drew McMichael]

Marie & Garnet Shoup (mgs...@comnet.ca) wrote:
: Was the literacy test a general requirement of the franchise or was it

: just applied to blacks? Thank you.

It was general, and by the 1950s disfranchised more whites than blacks.
[ref. Hugh Davis Graham, _Civil Rigths and the Presidency_]

Andrew

[steven f miller]

Drew McMichael (dr...@panix.com) wrote:

A couple points by way of clarification. First, literacy tests for the
franchise were not instituted during or immediately after Reconstruction,
but not until the period 1890-1910 (the timing varied from state to
state). Pretty clearly, many of the suffrage-restrictors wanted to
disfranchise poor white voters along with black ones, fearing the sort of
multi-racial political alliance that had arisen in a minor way during
various Independent political movements and the Populist insurgency.
Other disfranchisers were looking for a legally defensible way of denying
the vote to blacks de facto, since under the 14th Amendment there were
penalties for denying suffrage on the basis of race.

Second, though as Drew points out the literacy tests were ostensibly
race-neutral, they were accompanied by exemptions by which whites who
failed the test could be allowed to vote anyway. The two main ones were
the "grandfather clause," by which anyone whose grandfather had legally
exercised the franchise was permitted to vote (obviously no black men save
a few of mixed ancestry could claim this exemption) and the "understanding
clause," by which white voting registrars orally quizzed would-be voters
about their understanding of the Constitution and other matters pertaining
to the vote, with those who passed the examination allowed to vote (guess
who tended to do best on the exams).

This matter is treated briefly in the two main surveys of the New South,
C. Vann Woodward's _Origins of the New South_ and Edward Ayers's _The
Promise of the New South_. J. Morgan Kousser, _The Shaping of Southern
Politics_ is a much more detailed account.

Cordially,

Steven F. Miller

[Drew McMichael]

steven f miller (sfmi...@wam.umd.edu) wrote:
: This matter is treated briefly in the two main surveys of the New South,

: C. Vann Woodward's _Origins of the New South_ and Edward Ayers's _The
: Promise of the New South_. J. Morgan Kousser, _The Shaping of Southern
: Politics_ is a much more detailed account.

Excellent points all. I woudl add to the list that
Woodward's _Strange Career of JKim Crow_ covers all of this
and is a good, quick read.

Andrew