What did literacy tests and poll taxes do?
Literacy tests, along with poll taxes, residency and property restrictions, and extra-legal activities (violence and intimidation) were all used to deny suffrage to African Americans. The first formal voter literacy tests were introduced in 1890.
What banned the use of literacy tests and poll taxes?
This act was signed into law on August 6, 1965, by President Lyndon Johnson. It outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting.
How did the poll tax finally get banned?
On this date in 1962, the House passed the Twenty-fourth Amendment, outlawing the poll tax as a voting requirement in federal elections, by a vote of 295 to 86. At the time, five states maintained poll taxes which disproportionately affected African-American voters: Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Texas.
What was the purpose of the poll tax?
The poll tax was essentially a lay subsidy, a tax on the movable property of most of the population, to help fund war. It had first been levied in 1275 and continued under different names until the 17th century. People were taxed a percentage of the assessed value of their movable goods.
What was the main purpose of poll taxes literacy tests and grandfather clause?
Poll taxes, literacy tests, fraud and intimidation all turned African Americans away from the polls. Until the Supreme Court struck it down in 1915, many states used the “grandfather clause ” to keep descendents of slaves out of elections.
When were poll taxes banned?
Not long ago, citizens in some states had to pay a fee to vote in a national election. This fee was called a poll tax. On January 23, 1964, the United States ratified the 24th Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting any poll tax in elections for federal officials.
Which Supreme Court case determined that literacy tests were not a violation of any clause or constitutional Amendment?
United States, 238 U.S. 347 (1915), was a United States Supreme Court decision that found certain grandfather clause exemptions to literacy tests for voting rights to be unconstitutional.
What are the effects of the poll tax ordinance?
According to the terms of the Ordinance, every adult was to pay an annual tax of one shelling. Most of the residents could not meet this obligation because they were poor and could not afford it. This led to poor patronage. In effect, many people ended up not paying the tax at all.
What did the literacy tests do?
Description. After the Civil War, many states enacted literacy tests as a voting requirement. The purpose was to exclude persons with minimal literacy, in particular, poor African Americans in the South, from voting.