ABSTRACT
The ban on literacy tests included in Section 4 of the VRA principally protected African-American voters in southern states, with some secondary benefits to language minorities. But southern Blacks who were disenfranchised by tests and devices were not the only focus of the original 1965 Act. Section 4(e) of the 1965 Act prohibited the use of English literacy tests as a condition for voting by Puerto Ricans. That provision was important in laying the foundation for the language assistance provisions that Congress added in 1975.
