Friday, February 05, 2010

Invoking ‘literacy test,’ Tea Party opening speaker suggests blacks be kept from voting | Raw Story

Invoking ‘literacy test,’ Tea Party opening speaker suggests blacks be kept from voting | Raw Story

The opening night speaker at the Tea Party convention suggested a return to a "literacy test" to protect America from presidents like Obama -- a segregation-era method employed by southern US states to keep blacks from voting.

In his speech Thursday to attendees, former Republican congressman Tom Tancredo invoked the loaded pre-civil rights era buzzword, saying that President Barack Obama was elected because "we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country."

Southern states used literacy tests as part of an effort to deny suffrage to African American voters prior to Johnson-era civil rights laws....

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