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A poll tax is a tax of a fixed sum on every liable individual (typically every adult), without reference to income or resources. Various privileges of citizenship, including voter registration or issuance of driving licenses and resident hunting and fishing licenses, were conditioned on payment of poll taxes to encourage the collection of this tax revenue.
History of the poll tax by state from 1868 to 1966. Southern states had adopted the poll tax as a requirement for voting as part of a series of laws in the late 19th century intended to exclude black Americans from politics so far as practicable without violating the Fifteenth Amendment. This required that voting not be limited by "race, color ...
The poll tax, along with literacy tests and extra-legal intimidation, [43] such as by the Ku Klux Klan, achieved the desired effect of disenfranchising African Americans. Generally, In the United States, the term "poll tax" is used to mean a tax that must be paid in order to vote, rather than a capitation tax simply.
Butler v. Thompson is heard by the Supreme Court which rules that poll taxes are settled law that the state of Virginia is allowed to impose. [citation needed] 1952. All Americans with Asian ancestry are allowed to vote through the McCarran Walter Act. [11] 1954. Native Americans living on reservations earn the right to vote in Maine. [45] [46 ...
Linda Upham-Bornstein's "Mr. Taxpayer versus Mr. Tax Spender" delivers an evenhanded view of American tax ... about the extent to which African-American poll tax resistance counts as a form of tax ...
Court cases brought by African-American women and men finally ended the practice of using the poll tax to limit voting in Virginia. [214] Their briefs showed that poverty, as well as race, impacted women as a class. [ 215 ]
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Although the Fifteenth Amendment was never interpreted to prohibit poll taxes, in 1962 the Twenty-fourth Amendment was adopted banning poll taxes in federal elections, and in 1966 the Supreme Court ruled in Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections (1966) [73] that state poll taxes violate the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause ...