Although Congress had acted to prevent segregation, Southern States managed to seize some African American rights, such as the free right to vote. One of the barriers that were created was the literacy test. Since most African Americans did not know how to read or write, since most of them were ex-slaves and were forbidden to learn to do so, they did not pass the literacy test. The literacy test excluded 60% of voting-age black men, also the test mostly excluded all black men because it was designed to them to fail.
