In 1960, the state of Louisiana became the battleground for one of the most brazen campaigns of voting sabotage in American history. White officials in multiple parishes systematically purged Black voters from registration rolls, manipulated literacy tests, and deployed every bureaucratic weapon available to prevent African Americans from exercising their constitutional right to vote. The battle that followed exposed the machinery of disenfranchisement and helped build the case for the Voting Rights Act that would come five years later. The methods of voter suppression were both creative and ruthless. Registrars administered literacy tests with deliberately impossible standards, asking Black applicants to interpret obscure constitutional provisions while waving white applicants through with minimal questioning. Registration offices in Black neighbo ...