Eliminate the literacy test from the NC Constitution
When the 2021-2022 session of the North Carolina General Assembly begins work, legislators will face no shortage of pressing issues. Coronavirus response, questions about whether to expand Medicaid, voter ID, redistricting — the list goes on. Unfortunately for North Carolinians, few, if any of these issues are likely to garner bipartisan agreement and the vast majority will end up mired in seemingly endless debate. It’s the nature of divided government in a purple state.
Given this bleak outlook for compromise, legislators and the governor may be looking a policy that can signal that bipartisan cooperation is possible and will garner public support from multiple constituencies within the state. It would be even better if the policy would signal to the rest of the country that North Carolina’s leaders are trying to make the Old North State a little more inclusive and a little more responsive to the better angels of our nature. Perhaps the best candidate for such an issue is eliminating the literacy test from the North Carolina Constitution.
While the literacy test hasn’t been enforced in decades, its presence in our state’s constitution reinforces in word, if not in deed, that the right to vote in North Carolina is contingent upon this racist vestige of the Jim Crow South.
Some may be surprised that a literacy test still exists in the North Carolina Constitution, but there it is, in clear language in Article VI, Section 4: “Every person presenting himself for registration shall be able to read and write any section of the Constitution in the English language.” Because it is enshrined as such, the threshold for change is higher for than it would be for most other issues. At least 60 percent of the member of both houses of the General Assembly must vote to place the question on the ballot and the majority of voters must then vote to eliminate the language.
The closest we came to eliminating this racist and arcane provision was during the last large-scale revision of our state constitution. In 1969, Henry Frye, the first African American legislator elected in North Carolina since Reconstruction, proposed a bill to place the elimination of the literacy test to a vote of the people. As reported by Rod Cockshutt of the News and Observer, when it passed Frye was “jubilant,” proclaiming it made him “feel that his service in the General Assembly had been worthwhile.” Although Frye was successful in bringing the proposal to a vote of the people, the elimination of the literacy test was the only amendment out of the six that were on the ballot that did not receive a majority of the vote. It wasn’t even particularly close, with just 44 percent of voters supporting the elimination of the literacy test.
As recently as 2019, state legislators had proposed a bill to allow the people to repeal the literacy test once and for all (HB 314). This bill passed the North Carolina House and garnered support from a variety of groups and constituencies, including the News and Observer’s Colin Campbell, who called the fact that the literacy test is still on the books “pretty gross,” and Andy Jackson from the conservative Civitas Institute who, in an editorial published in the Asheville Citizen Times described the literacy test as “a barnacle on North Carolina’s ship of state that should be scraped off as soon as possible.” Despite what seemed to be bipartisan support, however, the bill never made it out of the state Senate.
The time has long since come to eliminate the literacy test from our state’s constitution. Do it for Henry Frye, who served our state in countless ways. Do it for those who were disenfranchised by this and other remnants of the Jim Crow South. Do it as a response to the divisive nature of our times. Do it to signify that Raleigh is not broken and bipartisanship is possible.
Just do it.
Christopher Cooper is Madison Distinguished Professor and head of the Department of Political Science and Public Affairs at Western Carolina University.
