A literacy test, in the context of United States political history, refers to the government practice of testing the literacy of potential citizens at the federal level, and potential voters at the state level. The federal government first employed literacy tests as part of the immigration process in 1917. Southern state legislatures employed literacy tests as part of the voter registration process as early as the late 19th century.

Literacy tests, along with poll taxes and extra-legal intimidation, were used to deny suffrage to African-Americans. The first formal voter literacy tests were introduced in 1890. Whites were exempted from the literacy test if they could meet alternate requirements that, in practice, excluded blacks. These included demonstrating political competence in person or showing descent from someone who was eligible to vote before 1867 (the post-Civil War civil rights constitutional amendments 13, 14, and 15 were enacted in 1865, 1868, and 1870, respectively).

Southern states abandoned the literacy test only when forced to do so by federal legislation in the 1960s. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 provided that literacy tests used as a qualification for voting in federal elections be administered wholly in writing and only to persons who had not completed six years of formal education. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 suspended the use of literacy tests in all states or political subdivisions in which less than 50 percent of voting-age residents were registered as of November 1st 1964 or had voted in the 1964 presidential election. In a series of cases, the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the legislation and restricted the use of literacy tests for non-English-speaking citizens. Since the passage of this legislation, black registration in the South has increased substantially.

Ann Hart Coulter (born December 8, 1961) is an American lawyer,conservative social and political commentator, author, and syndicated columnist. She frequently appears on television, radio, and as a speaker at public events and private events. Well-known for her conservative political opinions and the controversial ways in which she presents and defends them, Coulter has described herself as a polemicist who likes to "stir up the pot" and does not "pretend to be impartial or balanced, as broadcasters do."

Ann Hart Coulter was born in New York City on December 8, 1961, to Nell Husbands (née Martin; a native of Paducah, Kentucky) and John Vincent Coulter (a native of Albany, New York). The family later moved to New Canaan, Connecticut, where Coulter and her two older brothers, James and John, were raised. She graduated from New Canaan High School in 1980. Coulter's age was disputed in 2002 while she was arguing that she was not yet 40, yet Washington Post columnist Lloyd Grove cited that she provided a birthdate of December 8, 1961, when registering to vote in New Canaan, Connecticut prior to the 1980 Presidential election. Meanwhile, a driver's license issued several years later allegedly listed her birthdate as December 8, 1963. Coulter will not confirm either date, citing privacy concerns.

Oprah Winfrey (born Orpah Gail Winfrey; January 29, 1954) is an American media proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist. Winfrey is best known for her self-titled, multi-award-winning talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011. She has been ranked the richest African-American of the 20th century, the greatest black philanthropist in American history, and was for a time the world's only black billionaire. She is also, according to some assessments, the most influential woman in the world.

Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a teenage single mother and later raised in an inner-city Milwaukee neighborhood. She experienced considerable hardship during her childhood, claiming to be raped at age nine and becoming pregnant at 14; her son died in infancy. Sent to live with the man she calls her father, a barber in Tennessee, Winfrey landed a job in radio while still in high school and began co-anchoring the local evening news at the age of 19. Her emotional ad-lib delivery eventually got her transferred to the daytime-talk-show arena, and after boosting a third-rated local Chicago talk show to first place, she launched her own production company and became internationally syndicated.