One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy

by Carol Anderson

In the 1966 state election, those who were illiterate tried to use labels and stickers to indicate their preference only to have those votes be discarded and uncounted according to the new rule requiring the names be handwritten. This latest iteration was as “race-neutral” as the literacy test. After the Brown decision, Virginia led the effort to make the Supreme Court decision to end segregation in the schools unenforceable and untenable. So determined were state lawmakers to resist Brown that they shut down school districts throughout Virginia, funneled tax dollars into all-white private academies so that white children could continue their education, and provided no educational opportunities whatsoever for black students. This went on for years. In short, Virginia ensured that there would be schooling for whites but not blacks; and after that, the state changed its laws so that those who were illiterate would not be able to vote.