This example Louisiana literacy test is typical of the tests used before passage of the Voting Rights Act to deny Blacks (and other non-whites) the right to vote. While state law mandated that the test be given to everyone who could not verify that they had at least a 5th-grade education, in real life almost all Blacks were forced to do so even if they had a college diploma while whites were often excused from taking it no matter how little education they had.
As you can see, the questions were deliberately designed to be tricky and confusing. Determination of who "passed" and who "failed" was entirely up to the whim of the Registrar of Voters — all of whom were white. In actuality, whites almost always "passed" no matter how many questions they missed, and Blacks were almost always "failed" in the selective judgement of the Registrar.
For example, Question 20 reads: "Spell backwards,
forwards." Answers by whites would be judged correct no matter
what they wrote. But Blacks who wrote both words but forgot to include
the comma would be failed, or if they included the comma they would be
failed for that, or if they just wrote "backwards" they
would be failed for not including the word "forwards."
See The Louisiana Literacy Test and How It Worked to Deny Black Voting Rights for more information.
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