What Does a “Wall” Look Like in Voter Suppression?

In 1963, many states in the South and West had laws that were not discriminatory on their face, but racial in their application. In U.S. v. Louisiana (1963), the court started to tear down a race wall by opening with these words:

A wall stands in Louisiana between registered voters and unregistered, eligible Negro voters. The wall is the State constitutional requirement that an applicant for registration ‘understand and give a reasonable interpretation of any section’ of the Constitutions of Louisiana or of the United States. It is not the only wall of its kind, but since the Supreme Court's demolishment of the white primary, the interpretation test has been the highest, best-guarded, most effective barrier to Negro voting in Louisiana.

The court described what this wall look like:

When a Louisiana citizen seeks to register, the Parish Registrar of Voters may ask the applicant to interpret the provision, ‘The Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal, and each of the judges * * * may also in aid of their respective jurisdictions, original, appellate, or supervisory, issue writs of mandamus, certiorari, prohibition, quo warranto, and all other needful writs'. Or, the registrar may ask the applicant to interpret a less technical but more difficult provision, constitutionally, such as, ‘Every person has the natural right to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience.' In giving this test, the registrar selects the constitutional section and he must be satisfied with the explanation. In many parishes the registrar is not easily satisfied with constitutional interpretations from Negro applicants.

The court took down this wall, stating the following (below). Can you think of any executive order(s) that fit the following reasoning? If you are inclined, comment on this posting:

In this case, too, we must go into the ‘history’ and ‘present setting’ of a law non-discriminatory on its face. In doing so, we bear in mind a maxim quoted appropriately in this circuit many times in recent years, a maxim from one of the Supreme Court decisions outlawing the Oklahoma grandfather clause: ‘(The Constitution) nullifies sophisticated as well as simple-minded modes of discrimination. It hits onerous procedural requirements which effectively handicap exercise of the franchise by the colored race although the abstract right to vote may remain unrestricted as to race. (Lane v. Wilson, 1939, 307 U.S. 268.)

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