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...
This is a contemporary on justice and voice, drawing on Isaiah 1:17.
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.…
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