Nancy Bazemore

A landmark court case that reshaped voting rights across the state soon will be recognized with a North Carolina Highway Historical Marker. The N.C. Historical Marker Program is part of the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

The marker commemorating the Bazemore v. Bertie County Board of Elections court case will be dedicated May 24 at the intersection of West Watson and Sterlingworth streets in Windsor.

The case originated in May 1960 when Nancy Bazemore, a 47-year-old African American resident of Bertie County, walked into the Woodville precinct to register to vote. What followed was a legal battle that reached the North Carolina Supreme Court and reshaped voting rights across the state.

Bertie County's racial demographics told a stark story. Black residents outnumbered white residents by a 3-to-2 ratio, yet registered white voters outnumbered registered Black voters by nearly 9 to 1. County registrars maintained this disparity through a literacy test, a tool created in the late 19th century specifically to disenfranchise Black voters across the South.

In Woodville, the test took the form of dictation with a registrar reading aloud from the state constitution. Applicants transcribed what they heard with spelling errors counting against them. The North Carolina attorney general previously declared such spelling-based dictation tests illegal in March, but Bertie County ignored the ruling. Bazemore received a failing grade and was denied registration.

She appealed immediately. At her hearing a week later, her attorney, James R. Walker Jr., an Ahoskie native and UNC School of Law graduate, announced that Bazemore refused to submit to another dictation test. When the board rejected her appeal, Walker filed a lawsuit which ultimately landed before the North Carolina Supreme Court.

Walker's brief was pointed and thorough. He argued that the literacy test as administered in Bertie County was unconstitutional under the state constitution's separation of powers clause, because it effectively granted legislative authority to local election officials. He documented that the dictation requirement was applied exclusively to Black applicants. He also identified the test's inherent vulnerabilities to abuse — a registrar's pronunciation, reading speed, a voter's hearing or speech patterns, and the registrar's own discretion in grading could all determine the outcome, with little accountability.

In April 1961, the court ruled in Bazemore's favor. Though the justices declined to find bad faith on the part of Bertie County officials, they found the test as administered unreasonable and beyond legal intent.

The significance of the court case extended beyond Bertie County. Federal civil rights reports and subsequent voting rights discussions cited the case as evidence of the burden of literacy tests imposed on African American citizens.

For more information about the historical marker, visit the Nancy Bazemore blog post or call 919-814-6625.

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