Laws requiring African Americans to pass literacy tests before voting had clauses that allowed whites to vote without passing the tests.

The Fifteenth Amendment made it illegal for states to restrict the right to vote based on a person's level of education.

Congress banned states from requiring voters to pass literacy tests in order to vote when it passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875.

States passed laws that required poll workers to read ballots to white voters but did not require them to help African American voters.