Twenty-fourth Amendment To The United States Constitution - Background

Background

The poll tax was part of a series of laws intended to marginalize black Americans from politics so far as practicable without violating the Fifteenth Amendment, which required that voting not be limited by "race, color, or previous condition of servitude." The poll tax had the additional impact of weakening poor white voters who might sympathize with the Populist Party, though this was downplayed by proponents of the poll tax for fear of an electoral backlash against them. Passage of poll taxes began in earnest in the 1890s, as with the end of Reconstruction in 1877, no federal troops remained to enforce black voting rights. By 1902, all eleven states of the former Confederacy had enacted a poll tax. The poll tax worked in conjunction with a variety of disenfranchising measures, such as literacy tests, the "white primary", and threats of violence. For example, potential voters had to be "assessed" in Arkansas, and blacks were ignored in the assessment.

The poll tax was largely ignored at the federal level from 1900–1937, though some state-level initiatives repealed it. The poll tax survived a legal challenge in the 1937 Supreme Court case Breedlove v. Suttles, which ruled that " privilege of voting is not derived from the United States, but is conferred by the state and, save as restrained by the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments and other provisions of the Federal Constitution, the state may condition suffrage as it deems appropriate." The issue remained prominent, as President Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke out against the tax. He publicly called it "a remnant of the Revolutionary period" that the country had moved past. However, Roosevelt's favored liberal Democrats lost in the 1938 primaries to the reigning conservative Southern Democrats, and he backed off, as he felt he needed Southern Democratic votes to pass New Deal programs and did not want to further antagonize them. Still, efforts at the Congressional level to abolish the poll tax continued. A 1939 bill to abolish the poll tax in federal elections was tied up by lawmakers from the South, whose long tenure in office gave them seniority and a large proportion of committee chairmanships. A discharge petition was able to force the bill to be considered, and the House passed the bill 254–84. However, the bill was unable to defeat a filibuster in the Senate by Southern senators and a few Northern allies who valued the support of the powerful and senior Southern seats. This bill would be re-proposed in the next several Congresses, coming closest to passage thanks to World War II and the ability to frame abolition of the poll tax as a way to help overseas soldiers vote. However, senators from the South dug in their heels upon news of the Supreme Court decision Smith v. Allwright, which banned the "white primary". The poll tax remained one of the few "legitimate" methods of restricting the franchise. The bill came closest to passing in 1946. 24 Democrats and 15 Republicans approved an end to debate, while 7 non-southern Democrats and 7 Republicans joined with the 19 Southern Democrats in opposition. The result was a 39-33 vote in favor of the bill, but the filibuster required a two-thirds supermajority to break at the time; a 48-24 vote was required to pass the bill. Those in favor of abolition of the poll tax considered a constitutional amendment after the 1946 defeat, but that idea did not advance either.

The tenor of the debate changed in the 1940s. While in the 1890s and 1900s, politicians had been open about desiring to restrict the black vote, by the 1940s Southern politicians attempted to move the debate to Constitutional issues. Private correspondence indicates that black disenfranchisement was still the true concern, however, and indiscreet Mississippi Senator Theodore Bilbo declared "If the poll tax bill passes, the next step will be an effort to remove the registration qualification, the educational qualification of Negroes. If that is done we will have no way of preventing the Negroes from voting." This fear explains why Southern Senators from states that had abolished the poll tax still opposed the bill; they did not want to set a precedent that the federal government could interfere in elections. President Harry S. Truman established the President's Committee on Civil Rights, which among other issues investigated the poll tax. Considering that the opposition to federal poll tax regulation in 1948 was claimed to be a Constitutional one, it noted that a constitutional amendment might be the best way to proceed. Still, little occurred during the 1950s, as the anti-poll tax movement laid low during the anti-Communist mood of the time; some of the main proponents of poll tax abolition, such as Joseph Gelders and Vito Marcantonio, had been committed Marxists.

The Twenty-fourth Amendment, long proposed, was finally sent to the states for ratification at the behest of President John F. Kennedy, who brought the issue back into public consciousness. Kennedy considered the constitutional amendment the best way to avoid a filibuster, as the claim that federal abolition of the poll tax was unconstitutional would be moot. Still, some liberals opposed Kennedy's action, feeling that an amendment would be too slow compared to legislation. Spessard Holland, a conservative Democrat from Florida, introduced the amendment to the Senate. Holland opposed most civil rights legislation during his career, and Kennedy's gaining of his support helped splinter monolithic Southern opposition to the Amendment. Ratification of the amendment took only slightly more than a year, however, as it was rapidly ratified by state legislatures across the country from August 1962 to January 1964. President Johnson called the amendment a "triumph of liberty over restriction" and "a verification of people's rights." States that maintained the poll tax were more reserved. Mississippi's Attorney General, Joe Patterson, complained about the complexity of two sets of voters - those who paid their poll tax and could vote in all elections, and those who had not and could only vote in federal elections. Additionally, non-payers of the poll tax could still be deterred somewhat by forcing them to register far in advance of the election.