This page provides links to Civil Rights Movement Archive resources that have significant content related to voting rights and literacy tests.
Contents:
Photos
Literacy Tests & Voter Applications
CRMA History Articles About Voting Rights
Speeches and Articles About Voting Rights
Original Documents Related to Voting Rights
Commentaries & Analyses by Movement Veterans
Film, Video and Audio
Photo Album pages that include images of voting rights protests and voter registration campaigns:
Keep Your Eyes on the PrizeFreedom Is a Constant Struggle
Meredith Mississippi March, 1966
Introduction: the Literacy Test System
Alabama
Voter Registration in Alabama (c.1965)Alabama Voter Application Form (c.1965)
Alabama Voter Literacy Test (c.1965)
Georgia
Voter Registration in Georgia (c.1963)Summary of Georgia's New Registration Law (c.1958)
It's Easy to Register! (Georgia voter registration training, the "30 Questions")
Sumter Character Test (Sumter County GA voter registration training, 1963)
SCLC Citizenship Clinic Manual: Georgia Voter Registration (c.1962)
Louisiana:
Louisiana Voter Application & Literacy Test (c.1963)Instructions to Louisiana Registrars (c.1963 or 1964)
Negro Voting in Louisiana, Baton Rouge Committee on Registration Education. Undated (probably 1963 or 1964)
CORE Voter Training Instructions (c.1964)
Mississippi
Voter Registration in MississippiMississippi Voter Application & Literacy Test (c.mid-1950s)
Literacy test questions & voting rights materials
Practice Mississippi voter registration form partially filled in by Percey Lee Brewer
South Carolina
South Carolina Voter Application (c.1964)
CRMA history articles related to voting rights and literacy tests.
Voting Rights in America — Two Centuries of StruggleMurder of Harry & Harriette Moore (Dec, 1951)
Citizenship Schools (1954-196?)
Rev. George Wesley Lee Murdered (May 1955)
Lamar Smith Murdered (Aug 1955)
Tuskegee Merchant Boycott (1957-1961)
SCLC Crusade for Citizenship, 1957-1960
Fayette County Tent City for Evicted Voters (1959-1963)
Dr. King, JFK, and the 1960 Election (Oct-Nov 1960)
Voter Education Project (VEP) (1961-1968)
Direct Action or Voter Registration? (1961)
Voter Registration & Direct Action in McComb MS (Aug-Oct 1961)
Herbert Lee Murdered (Sept 1961)
Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) Formed in Mississippi (1962)
Mississippi Voter Registration — Greenwood (1962)
Voter Registration Movement Expands in Mississippi (Spring) (1963)
Atrocity in Winona (June 1963)
Selma — Breaking the Grip of Fear (Jan-June 1963)
Struggle for the Vote Continues in Mississippi (July-Aug 1963)
Freedom Day in Selma (Oct 1963)
Freedom Ballot in MS (Oct-Nov 1963)
24th Amendment Ends Poll Tax in Federal Elections (Jan 1964)
Louis Allen Murdered (Jan 1964)
Freedom Day in Canton (1964
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) Founded (April 1964)
1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer (June-Aug 1964)
Lynching of Chaney, Schwerner, & Goodman (June 1964)
McComb — Breaking the Klan Siege (July '64-March '65)
MFDP Challenge to Democratic Convention (Aug 1964)
The Selma Injunction (July 1964)
MFDP Congressional Challenge (Nov '64-Sept '65)
Selma Voting Rights Campaign (Jan-Mar 1965)
The March to Montgomery (Mar 1965)
Murder and Character Assasination of Viola Liuzzo (Mar 1965)
Passage of the Voting Rights Act (Mar-Aug 1965)
Cracking Lowndes County (Mar-Aug 1965)
Jackson, MS Protests (June 1965)
Summer Community Organization Political Education Project (SCOPE 1965)
Murder of Jonathan Daniels (Aug 1965)
Natchez MS — Freedom Movement vs Ku Klux Klan (1965)
Birmingham Voter Registration Campaign (Dec-Mar 1965-66)
Julian Bond Denied Seat in GA Legislature (Jan 1966)
State Poll Taxes Ruled Unconsitutional (Mar 1966)
Lowndes County: Roar of the Panther (1966)
Grenada MS Freedom Movement (June-Dec 1966)
1966 Alabama Elections (1966)
Speeches and articles related to voting rights and literacy tests by Freedom activists in the 1950s-1960s.
Collections of original Freedom Movement documents related to voting rights and literacy tests.
Documents From the Voter Education Project (VEP)Documents From the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) (MS)
Documents From the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MS)
Documents From the Freedom Summer Projects
SCLC's SCOPE Project Documents
Post-1960s commentaries, thoughts, and analyses by Movement veterans regarding voting rights and literacy tests.
Films & documentaries, videos, and audio recordings related to voting rights and literacy tests.
[Not all are available for online streaming. Some are accessed through Kanopy which requires library-card or college-ID log-in. Some are accessed through commercial straming platforms such as Prime.]Films:
Dirt and Deeds in Mississippi, by California Newsreel, 2015. Weaves together interviews with civil rights activists, archival film footage, and original historical research to portray a key period of civil rights history leading up to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Not available for streaming.
Dream Deferred. SNCC, 1964. Produced for Freedom Summer (also available from Prime).
Fannie Lou Hamer's America, by From the Heart Productions. Documentary told through the public speeches, personal interviews, and powerful songs of the fearless Mississippi sharecropper-turned-human-rights-activist.
For Us the Living, 1983. Anchor Bay Entertainment. Story of Medgar Evers. Screenplay by Ossie Davis. Starring Howard Rollins, Jr., Irene Cara, Laurence Fishburne, and Paul Winfield. Not available for streaming.
Freedom On My Mind, California Newsreel, 1994. The story of the Mississippi freedom movement in the early 1960s when a handful of young activists changed history. Not available for streaming.
Freedom Song (TNT Movie). Fictional account of the Movement in Mississippi in the early '60s. Closely based on actual events in McComb, 1961. Well researched, and powerfully presented. Danny Glover stars. Live stream (BMETV)
Freedom Summer, Firelight Films. Documentary narrating events of the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer. Live stream (YouTube)
The Freedom Summer Murders — Was It Worth It? (re Chaney, Schwerner, Goodman lynching), by two junior high students from New York City as National History Day Competition, 2019.
Home of the Brave, About Viola Luizzo the only white woman murdered in the civil rights movement in America and why we don't know who she is.
Iowans Return to Freedom Summer, by Keeping History Alive foundation. 2015. Firsthand accounts from six Freedom Summer volunteers from Iowa who reflect on their motivations, fears, triumphs and the life altering events that took place 50 years ago. Live stream (IPTV)
Louisiana Diary, KQED. Documentary that follows the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) as they undertake an African American voter registration drive in the town of Plaquemine, Louisiana, in 1963.
Mississippi Freedom Summer, 1964: Memory, Legacy & the Way Forward, by Civil Rights History Project Collection (LoC & NMAAHC). 4 hour discussion of the 1964 Freedom Summer project by Bob Moses, Dorie Ladner, Joyce Ladner and Charlie Cobb. 2014.
Organizing Lowndes County: Then & Now, April 2017. Roundtable discussion with Jennifer Lawson, Courtland Cox and Catherine Flowers.
Selma, Paramount Pictures, 2015. Powerful and moving historical drama about the historic 1965 Selma Voting Rights campiagn and March to Montgomery.
Selma: The Bridge to the Ballot, Teaching Tolerance. Documentary about a group of students and teachers who nonviolently fought to win voting rights for African Americans in the South.
Selma, Lord, Selma. Film made from the book of the same name about Selma's "youngest freedom fighters," Sheyann age 8, and Rachel age 9.
Sisters of Selma: Bearing Witness for Change. (Alabama Public Television.)
Streets Of Greenwood, by Jack Willis and Ed Emshwiller, 1962. Documentary about SNCC's voter registration efforts in Greenwood MS. 20 minutes.
Voting rights protests Montgomery (raw footage), by newsmedia? police?, Silent.
The Way to Freedom: Selma and the Making of a Movement, by NPS, 2020. The story of courageous ordinary citizens — many of them teenagers — who successfully challenged racism, bigotry, and entrenched power in Selma, Alabama in the 1960s to gain the right to vote. Narrated by "unsung heroes" of the voting rights movement in Selma and Marion, Alabama.
Videos:
Freddie Greene Biddle, 90-min interview by Emilye Crosby about SNCC & the Mississippi movement. 2015.
Walter Bruce, 85-min interview by John Dittmer about Mississippi movement & Freedom Summer, 2011.
Robert Clark, 118-min interview by John Dittmer about Mississippi & election to office.
Peggy Jean Connor, 81-min interview by Emilye Crosby about Mississippi, COFO, MFDP, and NAACP 2015.
Glenda Funchess, 84-min interview by Emilye Crosby about Hattiesburg Mississippi and the movement, 2015.
Bruce Hartford, Selma and the Long Struggle for Voting Rights. 10-minue address to the John Lewis Memorial, "Good Trouble Vigil for Democracy." Oakland, CA. July 2021.
Jesse Hill, one-hour interview about 1950s voter registration in Atlanta, student movement, and SNCC. 2005.
Willie B. Wazir Peacock: Stand for Freedom, 1hour, 23 minutes.
The story of Willie Peacock, one of the original SNCC field secretaries organzing in the Mississippi Delta. (YouTube video.)Zoharah Simmons, 97-minute interview by Joseph Mosnier about SNCC, Laurel MS, & the movement. 2011.
Euvester Simpson, 95-minute interview by John Dittmer about SNCC, COFO, MFDP and the movement in rural MS. 2013.
Lisa Anderson Todd, 169-minute interview by Emilye Crosby about SNCC & MFDP. 2013.
Hollis Watkins, 72-minute interview by Julian Bond oral history Project. 2019.
Junius Williams, 174-minute interview by Joseph Mosnier about SNCC, the March to Montgomery & the Movement. 2011.
Audio:
Fannie Lou Hamer: Roots of Her Activism. (History Channel)
Mississippi Becomes a Democracy. Story of voter registration, Freedom Summer, and the MFDP challenge in Atlantic City.
Mississippi Oral Histories (multiple oral-history recordings).
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