After the Civil war, the southern states used a tax on voting as a way to continue to control and limit the influence that African Americans, who could not afford to pay a poll tax, could have on government. Poll taxes became the main form of disenfranchisement - an effort made by the southern states of the former confederacy to prevent their African American citizens from registering to vote and from voting - by requiring that in order to vote, one must first pay a substantial fee (history.com). Such taxes greatly decreased the representation of the African American population and other poor citizens in the United States government. As a correction to the loophole that was the poll tax, the 24th amendment, proposed on August 27, 1962, prohibits …show more content…
By 1902 all eleven former confederate states had enacted a poll tax or some other restriction on African Americans’ right to vote. Although the new restrictions were indirect - many African Americans and poor whites could not afford to vote, and thus were not fairly represented in government - they still resulted in the marginalization of African Americans from politics as much as possible without violating the 15th amendment to the constitution (history.house.gov). The 15th amendment states that voting cannot be limited by "race, color, or previous condition of servitude," and seeing as how "poll taxes exemplified Jim Crow laws," (state laws enforcing racial segregation mainly in the southern U.S.), poll taxes proved to be a rather insidious and effective power for the southern states …show more content…
Southern states continued to prevail when poll taxes were deemed constitutional by the Supreme Court in 1937 in the case of Breedlove v. Suttles. The ruling of which concludes that the privilege of voting is not derived from the United States government, but is instead conferred by the state in which the voting is being conducted. With the exception of the restraints set forth by the 15th and the 19th amendments, suffrage was said to be conditioned by the states as deemed appropriate, which included the requirement of a tax payment (supreme.justia.com). With hopes of creating legislative opposition to poll taxes, congress made many attempts during the mid 1900s to pass a bill that would abolish them, but on each occasion the southern states managed to defeat it with one of their conquering filibusters against the bill. Fortunately, early support came from Franklin D. Roosevelt, who spoke out against taxation at the polls by labeling it as "a remnant of the revolutionary period," and suggested that congress should consider an amendment to the constitution as the best way to bypass the possibility of another filibuster, and the best chance to abolish poll taxes
Jim Crow Laws, enforced in 1877 in the south, were still being imposed during the 1930s and throughout. These laws created segregation between the two races and created a barrier for the Blacks. For example, even though African Americans were allowed to vote, southern states created a literary test exclusively for them that was quite difficult to pass, since most Blacks were uneducated. However, if they passed the reading test, they were threatened with death. Also, they had to pay a special tax to vote, which many African Americans could not afford.
Finally the 15th Amendment was made in 1870 to assure that every person in the US had the right to vote and no one could take that right away as a result of race, color or because citizens used to be slaves.
Additionally, the Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed blacks the right to vote, but the South found ways to get around this amendment.
...dom and right to vote established by the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, blacks were still oppressed by strong black codes and Jim Crow laws. The federal government created strong legislation for blacks to be helped and educated, but it was ineffective due to strong opposition. Although blacks cried out to agencies, such as the Freemen's Bureau, declaring that they were "in a more unpleasant condition than our former" (Document E), their cries were often overshadowed by violence.
Furthermore, only males were permitted to vote. Any women, regardless of race, were prohibited from voting until many years after the Civil War. Five of the 16 northern states allowed restricted black male voting. Of 11,000 blacks in New York City, only 100 could vote. The reason behind this is that you have to pay a $250 property requirement in order to vote.
The 15th amendment was quick to follow the Civil War, making it illegal to deny the right to vote to anyone on account of their race. Blacks did not actually gain the right to vote in all states until The Voting Rights Act in the 1960s. The government gave blacks the right to vote because they saw it could produce an immediate political gain. Nothing could be gained from allowing women to vote, so the government refrained from amending the constitution for women.
Some states are currently threatening to leave the country because of the belief that the government has too much power over the people and the laws our country has to follow. In our society, we live by laws set by the government, and if any of them are broken, there is a punishment. These laws are set to make sure that the people of America are following the way things are ran so the country will not collapse. Although these laws are set for the safety of the people, sometimes when the government has that kind of power to make people follow certain things they should not have to follow, many issues arise. In the late 1800’s, many issues emerged between the South and the Union on whether the Southern states had the right to secede from the United States. The Southern states did have the right to secede because of political, economical, and social reasons. These reasons include numerous examples of the Union treating the South unfairly and violating the terms of the U.S constitution.
The 15th Amendment states that “The right of the citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude”. This gave African Americans the right to vote. The amendment seemed to signify the fulfillment of all promises to African Americans. The 15th Amendment is also categorized as one of the three constitutional amendments. In the beginning thirty-seven states ratified the 15th Amendment. The first of these states to ratify the 15th Amendment was Nevada. To disenfranchise African Americans, devices were written into the constitutions of former confederate states. In 1869, when the New Year began, the republicans were anxious to introduce a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the black man’s right to vote. Congress considered the amendment that was proposed for two months. When congress approved a compromise, the amendment did not specifically mention the black man. The struggle for and against ratification hung on what blacks and other political interests would do. The Republican-dominated Congress passed the First Reconstruction Act. This act divided the South into five military districts and outlining how ...
Among the many ways Americans can participate in politics, voting is considered one of the most common and important ways for Americans to get involved. The outcome of any election, especially at the national level, determines who will be making and enforcing the laws that all Americans must abide by. With this in mind one might assume that all Americans are active voters, but studies show the voter turnout is actually astonishingly low. With this unsettling trend it is important to know what statistics say about voter turnout as was as the four major factors that influence participation: Socioeconomic status, education, political environment, and state electoral laws, in order to help boost turnout in future elections.
The laws undermined the thirteenth, fourteenth,and fifteenth amendments. The thirteenth amendment completely abolished slavery.The fourteenth amendment stated that all people born or naturalized in America were American citizens, even African Americans and former slaves. The fifteenth amendment stated that people could not be denied the right to vote no matter their race, color, or former condition of servitude. States, especially those in the south, started passing laws that pushed African Americans down into second class. Southern states soon made the Grandfather Clause, all voters must pay a poll tax, take a literacy and property test, and an understanding clause. They were able to do this by saying it was to disqualify the the poor and unintelligence people from voting.
the laws and male African Americans at a certain age, were now given the ballot.
John Adams once said "You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it." For many generations, our ancestors have fought for the right to vote. It started with the Civil Rights Act in 1964 which made it mandatory that white schools integrate black children into their institutions. The outcome of the 1964 election was a landslide, favoring the democrats, which broached the issue of civil rights legislation. In 1964 “only 7% of eligible black citizens in Mississippi were registered; in Alabama the figure was 20% (Kernell, et. al 2014, 162). The low voter turnout rate was because people of color were required to take a literacy test. This all changed when President Johnson
In Harvey H. Jackson III’s, “Democracy Undone”, gives examples of ways that blacks and poor whites were disenfranchised. For example Jackson mentions that one of the requirements to vote is to be a male at least twenty-one years, pay a poll tax of $1.50 a year, could read or write in English, and had to be in a lawful business for twelve months or owned $300 worth of property. Another example is a requirement that a person could not vote if he was convicted of one of more than thirty crimes that ranged from treason to vagrancy, which was a list that most African Americans were accused
The fifteenth amendment was proposed to congress on February 26, 1869 and was ratified a year later. After the Civil war, the confederate states were forced to ratify the reconstruction amendments in order to be reinstated into the union.3 Charles Sumner, an advocate for equal rights, refused to vote as he believed that the amendment did not take necessary steps to prevent the development of various state laws that could disenfranchise black voters.4 Sumner was correct, by the 1890s many states had adopted legislature designed to keep blacks from voting. The Poll Taxes and Literacy Tests may be the most emblematic legislation of the period. These laws were passed in order to ke...
It had finally led to an end of the illegal barriers under the 15th Amendment and allowed African Americans to vote without any knowledge or character test. Johnson stated, “For years and years they had been tried and tried and tried and they had failed and failed and failed. And the time for failure is gone” (Johnson). The statistics showed a large increase of African Americans in each state in the South in 1966. By 1970, over a million African Americans had registered to vote by (Quoted in “Victory for Voters”). The Voting Rights Act not only allowed African Americans to vote, but it also opened up many new opportunities for them. After all, Lyndon Johnson had successfully achieved his main goal to get many supporters from the south and it changed the nation towards a positive direction after the