NC Senate leader ready to remove Jim Crow-era literacy test from state constitution
The state’s top senator said Tuesday that a literacy test for voters “ought to be out of our constitution” and he’s ready to remove it.
It’s not the first time that state lawmakers have wanted to overturn the now-unenforceable provision, added to North Carolina’s constitution in 1900 during the country’s racist Jim Crow era.
That and other selectively enforced laws helped prevent Black people from voting during that era. According to NCpedia, the online state history resource, white people administered the literacy test requiring voters to interpret part of the Constitution, and often chose passages for Black voters “that even legal scholars had difficulty interpreting.” Meanwhile, women could not vote at all in 1900.
The test was outlawed across the country with the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but it remains in the state constitution.
It last came up in the General Assembly in 2021, after making it to the ballot in 1970 only to be rejected by North Carolina voters.
Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger, an Eden Republican, is interested in trying again to eliminate it.
Berger on literacy test
On Tuesday, The News & Observer asked Berger about the possibility of it moving this session. He told reporters on the Senate floor after session that “it’s something that I’ve talked to people about. I think it’s something that ought to be out of our Constitution.”
He said he didn’t plan to be the sponsor of the bill, but he’d “obviously” vote for it in the Senate and on the ballot, where it would go if approved by the legislature.
“But remember, we tried one time in the past to have it out, and we put it to the people, and people refused to take it out of the Constitution. Now, that’s been 50 years,” Berger said.
Previous attempts to advance the measure originated in the House. On Thursday, House members filed House Bill 44, a constitutional amendment to repeal the literacy test.
Legislators backing the measure say it’s long past time to remove what one bill sponsor called an “offensive provision.”
In 2021, Mecklenburg County Rep. Terry Brown Jr., who is Black, told the Associated Press that keeping it in the Constitution “does make you feel like you’re not truly a part of the state by still having that provision in there, knowing the history and the backstory of why it was enacted.”
Brown is one of the four primary sponsors of the bill filed on Thursday, which includes both Democrats and Republicans. Several co-sponsors also represent both parties.
Symbolic but significant
Civil rights historian and UNC professor William Sturkey told The News & Observer for a story published in January that repealing the literacy test would teach people about history and what earlier generations overcame to win voting rights.
Its persistence in the constitution, Sturkey said, “symbolizes, basically, the lack of any regret for the structures that were in place for decades and decades.
“And if you keep it, you’re legitimizing those white supremacists who don’t want Black people to vote.”
To change the North Carolina constitution, three-fifths of the House and Senate must “adopt an act submitting the proposal to the qualified voters of the State for their ratification or rejection.” Then a majority of voters must approve it.
If an amendment is passed, it would become effective Jan. 1 the year after it is ratified by voters, unless a different date is included in the proposal.
“So we’ll see. I think I think there was some concern about whether or not and it would pass. So we’ll see what folks want to do,” Berger said.
This story was originally published January 31, 2023 at 1:45 PM with the headline "NC Senate leader ready to remove Jim Crow-era literacy test from state constitution."
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