When Press Robinson registered to vote in South Carolina in 1963, he was handed a copy of the U.S. Constitution and told to read it aloud and interpret it.
Robinson, then a college sophomore, wasn’t surprised. He heard stories from others in the South’s Black community who faced Jim Crow-era methods to suppress Black votes – from literacy tests to poll taxes to the infamous “jellybean test" that required prospective voters to guess how many of the small candies were in a jar.
