Mississippi Voter Registration: 5 Percent Black Voter Registration Through Systematic Terror

By 1955, only about 5 percent of eligible Black voters in Mississippi are registered despite being a majority of the population in many counties. Barriers include literacy tests administered subjectively (requiring interpretation of obscure constitutional provisions), poll taxes, economic retaliation, physical violence, and murder. Registrars accept illiterate white applicants while rejecting college-educated Black applicants. In Humphreys County, where Black people are 70 percent of the population, not a single Black voter is registered in 1955.