In William Faulkner’s 1938 novel The Unvanquished, the unyielding Colonel Sartoris resorts to extreme measures to block the election of a Black Republican candidate following the Civil War, destroying Black voters’ ballots and even shooting two Northern carpetbaggers. While such violent tactics were common in the Reconstruction-era South, methods of voter suppression evolved. By the mid-20th century, Jim Crow laws in the South primarily relied on literacy tests, nearly impossible to pass, to hinder fair elections.
Rebecca Onion, writing for Slate, explains that these literacy tests were “supposedly applicable to both white and black prospective voters who couldn’t prove a certain level of education” (typically up to the fifth grade). However, in reality, Black voters were disproportionately targeted.
