Your Rights Explained: Voting and Literacy Tests - Presentation and Activities (Grades 8-12)

Equip your students with a deep understanding of the history of voting rights and voter suppression in the United States. This comprehensive resource package, titled "Your Rights Explained: Voting and Literacy Tests," is designed for students in grades 8-12 and explores the use of literacy tests as a tactic to suppress voters throughout history. The resource was created in Canva and may be better suited to be presented in Canva. Other online platforms that work well with this resource are Google Slides and Microsoft PowerPoint.

This resource includes a PowerPoint Presentation, Teacher Resource File, and various supplementary materials and activities.

What's Inside:

• PowerPoint Presentation: A visual aid for your lessons, featuring slides on key topics and activities. Simply click through the presentation to read and discuss voting topics. Presentation notes and web links are provided to aid discussions and activities. Embedded elements within the presentation include a podcast and a YouTube video, and a copy of the Alabama Literacy Test given to minority voters. If embedded elements do not work, a link is provided on the page.

• Teacher Resource File: Contains Individual Slide overviews and suggested lecture points, Class Discussion Teacher Information Text (including slide notes), the text of the 14th Amendment, the text of the 15th Amendment to use with the Pick Apart The Argument class discussion on slide 20, information on voting Before the Voting Rights Act, Reconstruction and Civil War Amendment details, a printable copy of Voting Rights Act Section 4 (Use with class discussions and Pick Apart the Argument activity), and Student Essay Questions.

• Printable Student Materials: A printable copy of the Voting Rights Act Section 4 for students to refer to for the Pick Apart the Argument activity and the first student essay question, Student Essay Questions, and a printable Cornell-Style Notes Template PDF FILE for student note-taking during the YouTube video, Voting Rights Act Section 4, and other activities.

Key Learning Objectives:

Delve into critical periods and legislation shaping American voting rights:

• Historical Context: Explore the era of slavery, its economic impact (billions of dollars in southern agriculture), and the Civil War where the Union prevailed and slavery was abolished in 1865.

• Civil War Amendments: Understand the significance of the 14th Amendment (1868), which granted full citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the US, including voting rights. Discuss its link to Black economics, workforce, and entrepreneurship. Learn about the 15th Amendment (1870), which forbade all racial barriers to voting and giving  Congress the power to enforce the article by appropriate legislation. The ratification of these amendments led to millions of Black Americans becoming citizens and eligible to vote, quickly becoming the majority in some areas, which resulted in an increase of Black Americans in political office.

• Voter Suppression Tactics: Examine the methods used to discourage minority voters, including the widespread use of Literacy Tests.  Learn the purpose of these tests, how they were devised, and their impact on voting rights. 

• The Voting Rights Act of 1965: Analyze this pivotal act and how it eliminated the use of Literacy Tests nationwide and federally enforced registration and voting rights.

• Engaging Classroom Activities & Discussions:

The resource facilitates interactive learning with activities like:

1. Class Discussions: Covering topics such as the 14th and 15th Amendments, their causes and effects, how Black Americans were elected, and why White Americans felt the need to use voter suppression.

2. The Devise a Literacy Test activity: Have students look at the 1965 Alabama Literacy Test and research US political and government facts to create their own test questions intended for the taker to fail.

3. Discussion of the North Carolina State Constitution: Discuss Article 6: Section 4 regarding qualification for registration and whether this test is justified or illegal compared to the 14th and 15th Amendments and the Voting Rights Act. The source notes this test is no longer used but remains in the constitution.

4. The Pick Apart The Argument activity: Print or make accessible the 14th and 15th Amendments and the Voting Rights Act for students to use to analyze a YouTube video of Ann Coulter discussing bringing back literacy tests.

5. Utilizing the Student Essay Questions: Have students answer questions such as whether they can trust the media and political experts regarding their rights and how they would respond to a question about their education level being required to vote.

6. Additional resources are listed to see what voting was like in the Jim Crow South during the 1960s and to get further information on the Voting Rights Act of 1965 from the Department of Justice website.

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