speechless, just speechless

Tea Party opening speaker suggests law that kept blacks be kept from voting be reinstated

By John Byrne

The opening night speaker at the Tea Party convention suggested a return to a "literacy test" to protect America from presidents like Obama -- a segregation-era method employed by southern US states to keep blacks from voting.

In his speech Thursday to attendees, former Republican congressman Tom Tancredo invoked the loaded pre-civil rights era buzzword, saying that President Barack Obama was elected because "we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country."

Southern states used literacy tests as part of an effort to deny suffrage to African American voters prior to Johnson-era civil rights laws.

"Prior to passage of the federal Voting Rights Act in 1965, Southern (and some Western) states maintained elaborate voter registration procedures whose primary purpose was to deny the vote to those who were not white," a website for civil rights veterans explains. "In the South, this process was often called the 'literacy test.' In fact, it was much more than a simple test, it was an entire complex system devoted to denying African-Americans (and in some regions, Latinos) the right to vote.".............

Tancredo: Obama Elected Because 'We Do Not Have A Civics, Literacy Test'

Zachary Roth

Organizers of the National Tea Party Convention, who have been at pains to present their confab as a gathering of patriotic and mainstream Americans, may not have been pleased by the speech given by their opening-night speaker.

Former congressman Tom Tancredo declared that President Obama was elected because "we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country." .........

Tom Tancredo to the Tea Partiers: Lack of 'civics literacy test' meant illiterates put 'a committed socialist' in White House

By David Neiwert

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