[inquest]

In connection with the adoption of the Voting Rights Act, Congress held lengthy hearings and made the factual determination that some states were using literacy tests for the purpose of denying and/or abridging the right of black citizens to vote and that the right of many black citizens to vote was in fact being denied and/or abridged because of that practice.

Not to sound heartless or anything, but so the hell what? You acknowledged at the beginning of your post that it was appropriate to ignore what the 15th amendment doesn't say, and it doesn't say that the states can't have impure motives when instituting suffrage criteria - it only says that they can't use that one particular criterion. Under what third-world conception of law do the authorities have the power to take action based on someone's reasons for doing what would otherwise be perfectly legal?

Accordingly, it determined that it would be impossible to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment without suspension of the literacy tests.

Then they were totally disconnected from reality. The literacy tests did not in any way interfere with Congress' ability to prevent racial tests from being instituted, which under the 15th, was the only thing they were allowed to even concern themselves with.

[ned]

The literacy tests did not in any way interfere with Congress' ability to prevent racial tests from being instituted, which under the 15th, was the only thing they were allowed to even concern themselves with.

The "literacy tests" were one of the "racial tests" that had been instituted. In March, 1965, before the Voting Rights Act was implemented, only 6.7% of black adults were registered to vote in Mississippi. By November, 1988, that 6.7% figure had increased to 74.2%.