Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution

"Twenty-fourth Amendment" redirects here. For alternative meanings, see Twenty-fourth Amendment (disambiguation)
Twenty-fourth Amendment (disambiguation)
The Twenty-fourth Amendment may refer to the:*Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution - which deals with succession to the U.S. presidency...

.

The Twenty-fourth Amendment (Amendment XXIV) prohibits both Congress and the states from conditioning the right to vote in federal

Federal government of the United States

The federal government of the United States is the national government of the constitutional republic of fifty states that is the United States of America. The federal government comprises three distinct branches of government: a legislative, an executive and a judiciary. These branches and...

elections on payment of a poll tax

Poll tax

A poll tax is a tax of a portioned, fixed amount per individual in accordance with the census . When a corvée is commuted for cash payment, in effect it becomes a poll tax...

or other types of tax. The amendment was proposed by Congress to the states on August 27, 1962, and was ratified by the states on January 23, 1964.

Poll taxes appeared in southern states

Southern United States

The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...

after Reconstruction as a measure to prevent African Americans from voting, and had been held to be constitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States

Supreme Court of the United States

The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...

in the 1937 decision Breedlove v. Suttles. At the time of this amendment's passage, five states still retained a poll tax: Virginia

Virginia

The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...

, Alabama

Alabama

Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...

, Texas

Texas

Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

, Arkansas

Arkansas

Arkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquian name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares borders with six states , and its eastern border is largely defined by the Mississippi River...

, and Mississippi

Mississippi

Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...

. The amendment made the poll tax clearly unconstitutional at the federal level. However, it was not until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6–3 in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections
Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections
Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, , was a case in which the U.S. Supreme Court found that Virginia's poll tax was unconstitutional under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment...

(1966) that all poll taxes (for both state and federal elections) were officially declared unconstitutional because they violated the Equal Protection Clause

Equal Protection Clause

The Equal Protection Clause, part of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, provides that "no state shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws"...

of the Fourteenth Amendment

Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments.Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship that overruled the Dred Scott v...

Text

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

Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits each government in the United States from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude"...

, 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

Confederate States of America

The Confederate States of America was a government set up from 1861 to 1865 by 11 Southern slave states of the United States of America that had declared their secession from the U.S...

had enacted a poll tax. The poll tax worked in conjunction with a variety of disenfranchising measures, such as literacy test

Literacy test

A literacy test, in the context of United States political history, refers to the government practice of testing the literacy of potential citizens at the federal level, and potential voters at the state level. The federal government first employed literacy tests as part of the immigration process...

s, 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 "[The] 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

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...

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

New Deal

The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...

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

Discharge petition

A discharge petition is a means of bringing a bill out of committee and to the floor for consideration without a report from a Committee and usually without cooperation of the leadership. Discharge petitions are most often associated with the U.S. House of Representatives, though many state...

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

Filibuster

A filibuster is a type of parliamentary procedure. Specifically, it is the right of an individual to extend debate, allowing a lone member to delay or entirely prevent a vote on a given proposal...

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
Smith v. Allwright
Smith v. Allwright , 321 U.S. 649 , was a very important decision of the United States Supreme Court with regard to voting rights and, by extension, racial desegregation. It overturned the Democratic Party's use of all-white primaries in Texas, and other states where the party used the...

, 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 75% 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

Harry S. Truman

Harry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States . As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president and the 34th Vice President of the United States , he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his...

established the President's Committee on Civil Rights

President's Committee on Civil Rights

The President's Committee on Civil Rights was established by Executive Order 9808, which Harry Truman, who was then President of the United States, issued on December 5, 1946. The committee was instructed to investigate the status of civil rights in the country and propose measures to strengthen...

, 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 may 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

Vito Marcantonio

Vito Anthony Marcantonio was an American lawyer and democratic socialist politician. Originally a member of the Republican Party and a supporter of Fiorello LaGuardia, he switched to the American Labor Party.-Early life:...

, 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

John F. Kennedy

John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....

, 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

Spessard Holland

Spessard Lindsey Holland was an American lawyer, politician and elected officeholder. He was the 28th Governor of Florida from 1941 until 1945, during World War II. After finishing his term as governor, he was a United States Senator from Florida from 1946 until 1971...

, 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

Lyndon B. Johnson

Lyndon Baines Johnson , often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States...

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.

Proposal and ratification

Congress proposed the Twenty-fourth Amendment on August 27, 1962. The amendment was submitted to the states on September 24, 1962, after it passed with the requisite two-thirds majorities in the House and Senate. The following states ratified the amendment:

Illinois (November 14, 1962)
New Jersey (December 3, 1962)
Oregon (January 25, 1963)
Montana (January 28, 1963)
West Virginia (February 1, 1963)
New York (February 4, 1963)
Maryland (February 6, 1963)
California (February 7, 1963)
Alaska (February 11, 1963)
Rhode Island (February 14, 1963)
Indiana (February 19, 1963)
Utah (February 20, 1963)
Michigan (February 20, 1963)
Colorado (February 21, 1963)
Ohio (February 27, 1963)
Minnesota (February 27, 1963)
New Mexico (March 5, 1963)
Hawaii (March 6, 1963)
North Dakota (March 7, 1963)
Idaho (March 8, 1963)
Washington (March 14, 1963)
Vermont (March 15, 1963)
Nevada (March 19, 1963)
Connecticut (March 20, 1963)
Tennessee (March 21, 1963)
Pennsylvania (March 25, 1963)
Wisconsin (March 26, 1963)
Kansas (March 28, 1963)
Massachusetts (March 28, 1963)
Nebraska (April 4, 1963)
Florida (April 18, 1963)
Iowa (April 24, 1963)
Delaware (May 1, 1963)
Missouri (May 13, 1963)
New Hampshire (June 12, 1963)
Kentucky (June 27, 1963)
Maine (January 16, 1964)
South Dakota (January 23, 1964)

Ratification was completed on January 23, 1964. Georgia had made a last-second stab at being the 38th state to ratify - something of a surprise as "no Southern help could be expected" for the amendment - but despite passing the Georgia Senate quickly and unanimously, the House did not act in time. Georgia's ratification was apparently dropped after South Dakota's ratification.

The amendment was subsequently ratified by the following states:

Virginia (February 25, 1977)
North Carolina (May 3, 1989)
Alabama (2002)
Texas (May 22, 2009)

The amendment was specifically rejected by the following state:

Mississippi (December 20, 1962)

The following states have not ratified the amendment:

Arizona
Arkansas
Georgia
Louisiana
Mississippi
Oklahoma
South Carolina
Wyoming

Post-ratification law

Arkansas

effectively repealed its poll tax for all elections with Amendment 51 to the Arkansas Constitution

Arkansas Constitution

The Constitution of the State of Arkansas is the governing document of the U.S. state of Arkansas. It was adopted in 1874, shortly after the Brooks-Baxter War replacing the 1868 constitution that had allowed Arkansas to rejoin the Union after the conclusion of the American Civil War; the new...

at the November 1964 general election, several months after this amendment was ratified, though the poll-tax language was not completely stricken from its Constitution until Amendment 85 in 2008. Of the five states originally affected by this amendment, Arkansas was the only one to voluntarily repeal its poll tax; the other four retained their taxes until they were struck down in 1966 by Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections
Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections
Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, , was a case in which the U.S. Supreme Court found that Virginia's poll tax was unconstitutional under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment...

(see below), though Federal district courts in Alabama

Alabama

& Texas

Texas

struck down their poll taxes less than two months before Harper.

The state of Virginia

Virginia

reacted by allowing an "escape clause" to the poll tax. In lieu of paying the poll tax, a prospective voter could file paperwork to gain a certificate establishing a place of residence in Virginia. In the 1965 Supreme Court decision Harman v. Forssenius
Harman v. Forssenius
Harman v. Forssenius, was a 1965 United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that Virginia's law partially eliminating the poll tax violated the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution...

, the Court unanimously found such measures unconstitutional and declared that for federal elections, "the poll tax is abolished absolutely as a prerequisite to voting, and no equivalent or milder substitute may be imposed."

While not directly related to the Twenty-fourth Amendment, the 1966 Supreme Court case Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections
Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections
Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, , was a case in which the U.S. Supreme Court found that Virginia's poll tax was unconstitutional under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment...

ruled that the poll tax was unconstitutional at every level, not just for federal elections. The Harper decision relied upon the Equal Protection Clause

Equal Protection Clause

of the Fourteenth Amendment

Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

, rather than the Twenty-Fourth Amendment. As such, issues related to whether burdens on voting are equivalent to poll taxes have usually been litigated on Equal Protection grounds since.

The 2008 case Crawford v. Marion County Election Board
Crawford v. Marion County Election Board
Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, 553 U.S. 181 was a United States Supreme Court case holding that an Indiana law requiring voters to provide photo IDs did not violate the Constitution of the United States.-Background:...

ruled that an Indiana law that required voters to obtain and present picture identification such as a driver's license was constitutional because the Supreme Court found no substantial burden imposed on voters and preventing voter fraud was a valid governmental objective. As of 2010, the issue continues to be litigated in state court in the case League of Women Voters, et al. v. Todd Rokita.

External links

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