Monday, October 12, 2009

Alabama Poll Tax

Here's a Poll Tax receipt where my Great Uncle Joshua Drayden Smith paid his Alabama poll tax on December 9, 1920. I remember my dad and granddaddy paying poll tax so they could vote, but I don't remember any women in the family going to the polls in the late 30s and 40s when I was growing up.


He was number 61. You had to bring receipts to the polls so they could check to make sure you had paid your poll tax. If you skipped a year, the tax accumulated even though you didn't vote.


I copied this info about the passing of the 24th admendment to the US Constitution in 1964 to abolish poll tax or any other kind of tax to keep people from voting.
"The poll or capitation (head) tax in the United States was a lump sum tax levied by state and local governments on individuals, who often had to pay the tax in order to vote. Popularly associated with racial and class restrictions on suffrage in the South, it actually expanded the suffrage when it was introduced shortly after the American Revolution, it unintentionally discouraged voting by white women after 1920, it was exaggeratedly blamed for many of the South’s ills in the 1930s and 40s.


The Twenty-fourth Amendment (Amendment XXIV) prohibits both Congress and the states from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax or other types of tax. The amendment was proposed by Congress to the states on August 27, 1962, and was ratified by the states on January 23, 1964. Poll taxes had been enacted in 11 Southern states after Reconstruction as a measure to prevent African Americans from voting, and had been held to be unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court. At the time of this amendment's passage, only five states still retained a poll tax: Virginia, Alabama, Texas, Arkansas, and Mississippi. However, it wasn't until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections (1966) that all state poll taxes (for both state and federal elections) were officially declared unconstitutional, because they violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment."



I remember that when we moved from Kansas to Decatur, GA in 1957 in order for Jim to go to college, we went to the court house to register to vote. We had to read a part of the US Constitution and then copy it on a blank sheet of paper so they could tell if we could read and write! I couldn't believe this. I remember thinking we're back in the "ole' South". 



I don't think I've ever missed voting in a Presidential Election or a state election when electing a Governor. I always try to make it to the polls for all elections. Our son liked to vote and wanted to go to the polls early, often being first in line. I had to help him with his ballot but he told me who he wanted to vote for. He was proud of his "I voted" sticker and wore it all day on election day.