Voter Registration After the Summer

This form, titled “Application to Register to Vote,” gives a glimpse into what a typical voter registration form looked like around the time of Freedom Summer. The application includes 21 questions, many of which include intentionally convoluted wording in order to target and weed out specific groups of applicants. Here are specific examples of the elaborate questions on the form:

    • If there is more than one person of your name in the precinct, by which name do you wish to be called?
    • Write is the space below a statement setting forth your understanding of the duties and obligations under a constitutional form of government.

This application is dated the same year that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law. The Voting Rights Act “outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting” (“Voting Rights Act”). This law also applied to discriminatory practices such as religious questioning.

However, this voting registration application has two of its three pages dedicated to proving that the applicant can read and write. Alongside that, many of the questions probe into the applicant’s religious background, asking about if the applicant is involved in a ministry, church, or gospel. This indicates that the Voting Rights Act was likely delayed in its implementation, especially in the southern states, much like Brown v. Board of Education, which was signed into law in 1954 only to be slowly implemented over the next two decades. It was not until 1968 that “the Supreme Court issued mandates that segregation be dismantled ‘root and branch’” (“The Southern Manifesto”).

Another notable feature of this application is the bottom of the second page, which reads:

  1. You have just completed a sample of the form used to register to vote in Mississippi.
  2. Go to the Court House in the County Seat at West Point.
  3. Ask the circuit clerk for an application to register to vote.
  4. Pay your poll tax in January.

This implies that the application was a practice form for applicants to get a sample of what the actual voter registration process would be like. Being able to practice and get constructive criticism from others would be very helpful for applicants that fell under a group that would typically be discriminated against before the Voting Rights Act was fully implemented.

Works Cited:

“The Southern Manifesto and ‘Massive Resistance’ to Brown.” NAACP Legal Defense Fund, https://www.naacpldf.org/brown-vs-board/southern-manifesto-massive-resistance-brown/. 

“Voting Rights Act.” National Archives, Feb. 2022, https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/voting-rights-act.

Aaron Henry, Voter Registration, and Freedom Summer
Voter Registration After the Summer