A poll tax was a fee a voter paid as a prerequisite to cast a ballot. The poll tax was used for many centuries in places like Great Britain, but in America this tax became a way to disenfranchise southern blacks. Blacks were given the right to vote through the Fifteenth Amendment, but after Reconstruction the eleven ex-Confederate states amended state constitutions to include a poll tax as a requirement to vote. This fee—which cost a voter up to $2—disenfranchised blacks and many poor whites.
The poll tax was eliminated in six southern states in the early 1900s. Civil rights leaders, though, wanted poll taxes eliminated in all states. In the 1940s, they lobbied Congress to pass a bill prohibiting poll taxes. In 1943, a 265 to 110 vote in the House approved the bill, but it was never passed by the Senate. On three other occasions, in 1945, 1947, and 1949, similar bills were passed in the House, but never in the Senate.
Poll taxes were finally eliminated during the civil rights movement. When the Twenty-fourth Amendment was ratified on January 23, 1964, poll taxes in federal elections were abolished. The amendment, however, failed to apply to state elections. Consequently, some southern states continued using the poll tax. In Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1966, the payment of a poll tax in state elections was declared a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. From thereafter, states discontinued using poll taxes in federal and state elections.
