Poll Taxes

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A poll tax sign in Mineola, Texas, 1939. Russell Lee, FSA/OWI Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Are poll taxes something new?

The word "poll" comes from a German word for "head.” Taxing a set amount levied on each individual, or “head.” By the 1690s, the phrase “poll tax” became a substitute for “head tax.” Poll taxes in the American colonies were per person taxes paid before the American Revolution. Though technically a revenue measure, the enactment of poll taxes was more recently used as a disfranchising device that had political implications. With this tax, one party and its political elite could completely dominate the power structure.


When and why did poll taxes become disfranchising agents in America?

Most of these disfranchising measures originated in the late 1890s in response to the success of the People’s Party in the South. During the 1880s the Negroes and white farmers combined in the People’s Party. This party nearly broke the political hold the Democrats had in the South. Once the People’s Party was defeated, the Democrats amended their state constitutions or drafted new ones to include various disfranchising devices including installing a poll tax. The poll tax was designed to be an instrument that could evade the reach of the Fifteenth Amendment which decrees that no state may deny or abridge the right of citizens to vote.  Dr. Ray Doudean of the University of Richmond Law School; wrote in Richmond Times, “The obvious purpose of the Democratic convention would be to limit the right of suffrage in every possible way so that illiterates and persons who did not help bear the financial burdens of the government, white and negro, would be disqualified from voting.” Quoting from the Democratic Convention speaker, Doudean relays “The right of suffrage is not a natural right. It is a social right and necessarily must be regulated by society.”



When and how were poll taxes ended?

Poll taxes in varying degrees remained in Southern states into the 20th century. Legislation to end poll taxes was introduced every year since 1939. By 1953, over half of the southern states had abolished the poll tax. When the Twenty-Fourth Amendment finally passed Congress in 1962, it forbade the use of poll taxes as a condition on voting only in federal, not state, elections. The Amendment was ratified in 1964. Two years later, the Supreme Court confirmed, in its Harper decision, that tying voting in state elections to poll tax payments was a denial of the equal protection clause set forth in the Fourteenth Amendment. This judgment served to extend the reach of the Twenty-fourth Amendment to state elections and seal the coffin of all poll taxes once and for all. 




 

Citing:

Encyclopedia of the American Constitution

FORBES, Nov 5, 2018, For Election Day, A History Of The Poll Tax In America

https://www.britannica.com/topic/poll-tax

https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu.

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