Prejudice and Discrimination

The Fifteenth Amendment gave all citizens of the United States the right to vote. Even though African Americans were granted the right to enfranchisement under the Constitution, discriminatory acts were used to keep them from the voting booths. One type of discriminatory act was the use of literacy tests. The purpose of the literacy test was to prove that a citizen was educated enough to vote. While the tests were supposed to be used on all citizens, the administering of the tests was disproportional. The tests had questions based on the government, and proved to be quite difficult. In this interactivity, experience some of the questions that appeared on literacy tests. Click the player button to get started.