What a Literacy Test Could Never Measure

In Selma, Alabama, in early 1965, only about two percent of eligible Black citizens in Dallas County were registered to vote. The barrier was not ignorance — it was a rigged system. County registrars administered so-called literacy tests with questions designed to be unanswerable, and even college-educated applicants were routinely failed. A schoolteacher could be told she had not correctly interpreted a clause of the state constitution. A pastor who knew Scripture by heart could be declared unfit to cast a ballot.

On August 6, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law in the President's Room of the U.S. Capitol, with Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, and Rosa Parks among the witnesses. With that signature, literacy tests were banned and federal examiners were authorized to register voters in counties where discrimination had persisted for generations.

Isaiah 1:17 commands God's people to "seek justice" and "defend the oppressed." Notice the active verbs — seek, defend. Justice is not a sentiment; it is a pursuit. It requires believers to identify the systems that strip dignity from those made in God's image and to act. When we encounter structures that silence or diminish our neighbors, faith demands more than sympathy. It demands the kind of specific, costly engagement that the Prophet Isaiah — and the God who inspired him — will not let us avoid.