This was a great thing and allowed African Americans to exercise their rights. On the other hand, the South did not want the African Americans to use their rights, so they found a legal way to prevent the African Americans from using their rights by creating literacy tests and poll taxes. Poll taxes required individuals to pay a tax before they could vote, and if they could vote they had to take a literacy test, which tests that African Americans were forced to take before they could vote. For example, the Texas Poll Tax had an extremely large amount of money for people to pay, but on this receipt, it was 76 dollars, which is equivalent to around 700 dollars today. This was outrageous because African Americans had just gotten out of slavery and they didn’t make income, so paying that poll tax just to vote wasn’t an option for them. An example of a literacy test is the Louisiana Literacy Test, which asks questions that you can have multiple answers to since the questions do not make sense and if they were to get it wrong then they are not allowed to
This was a great thing and allowed African Americans to exercise their rights. On the other hand, the South did not want the African Americans to use their rights, so they found a legal way to prevent the African Americans from using their rights by creating literacy tests and poll taxes. Poll taxes required individuals to pay a tax before they could vote, and if they could vote they had to take a literacy test, which tests that African Americans were forced to take before they could vote. For example, the Texas Poll Tax had an extremely large amount of money for people to pay, but on this receipt, it was 76 dollars, which is equivalent to around 700 dollars today. This was outrageous because African Americans had just gotten out of slavery and they didn’t make income, so paying that poll tax just to vote wasn’t an option for them. An example of a literacy test is the Louisiana Literacy Test, which asks questions that you can have multiple answers to since the questions do not make sense and if they were to get it wrong then they are not allowed to