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Can you pass an old voting literacy test?

Daald said:
I think it is a double command:

Write "backwards", "forwards". Or sad the long way:
Below write the words "backwards" , "forwards".

So you end up writing the two words exactly as listed.
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I read as either:

1) Spell "backwards", forwards (solution: "BACKWARDS")

2) Spell backwards, "forwards" (solution: "SDRAWROF")

Your interpretation didn't occur to me. It is as sensible as my two versions.

That's why it's evil. Anything could be right. Or wrong. Depending on whatever you fancy. Like the skin color of the testee.
 
The test writer themselves wasn't literate.

12. In the line below, cross out each number that is more that 20 but less than 30.
 
Gawdzilla Sama said:
Still begs the question "were the 'graders' any better educated"?
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Fair enough.

I would be fascinated by reading the test results of the general population and of the test administrators in particular.

Unfortunately, that was a time when any sociologist who showed up trying to compare the results of both white folks and blacks folks on a voting literacy test would have likely been murdered. A particularly sad time in American history.
 
ehcks said:
The test writer themselves wasn't literate.

12. In the line below, cross out each number that is more that 20 but less than 30.
Click to expand...

Also,

19. Draw in the space below a square with a triangle in it and within that some triangle draw a circle with a black dot in it.

That one would be even better if you didn't give them a black pen.
 
For me the problem with this test would be, you have to answer every question correctly to pass. Since I invariably get at least one question wrong on this type of quiz I doubt I would've passed it. And I agree, question 20 seems like a trick question that could (and probably would) be used to disqualify anyone who answered all the other questions correctly.
 
Years ago, I tried a quite different old pseudo-test to exclude black voters, but that one was obsessed with constitutional minutiae, both of the US and the particular southern state it was from. You were supposed to know things like which official comes sixth in the line of succession to the presidency, or the governorship, or the exact procedure for nominating justices to the State Supreme Court, that kind of thing.

Of course these tests were never actually graded. They were designed so that everyone would fail. Except that white people either got a copy with the right answers already marked, or a piece of paper certifying they'd passed (depending on whether anyone was watching or not). Black people got a blank one. In the unlikely circumstance that any black person passed, some of their answers would be changed.
 
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rwguinn said:
"Draw a line around..."?
Sorry, no can do...
nor can anybody else...
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Well, they never said it had to be a straight line

I would have messed with them in question #23 though. I'd have drawn my from the SW corner to the NE corner and my horizontal line from E to W and nobody would have been the wiser.

hee hee
 
As I read in a story "if you can't do calculus, I consider you illiterate" a line (in plane space) is defined by 2 points. Mathematicians would flunk the test...
 
ehcks said:
The test writer themselves wasn't literate.

12. In the line below, cross out each number that is more that 20 but less than 30.
Click to expand...

If you read the comment on the article, some theories may explain that:

1) The test is a hoax, and there's no paper trail within the administration that a test like that was ever administered.

2) While not a hoax, the presented test is not the official document, but a reconstruction by memory of someone who took it. Spelling errors, unusual word usage ("line around") and ambiguity that could be resolved by punctuation (like question 20) could be the result.

Of course, no one in the comments bothers to provide links or citations for such theories.
 
My first thought was that it was a fake, but that would mean the crack fact-checking team at the Daily Mail made a mistake. :rolleyes: Doesn't really matter though, the purpose of literacy tests was to keep blacks from voting. A test that would legitimately demonstrate a fifth-grade equivalent education wouldn't have served that purpose.
 
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