Amendment XXIV

Amendment XXIV
“The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.”

Section 1 gets rid of poll taxes.
Section 2 says that Congress has to make laws enforcing the amendment.

To say that I think this amendment was LONG overdue is an understatement. This amendment should have been drafted and ratified as soon as these ridiculous laws were enacted by the states. Poll taxes were discriminatory laws placed on voting at the polls in order to prevent Blacks from voting. When Blacks overcame the intimidation of the KKK and actually tried to vote, many white Southern states enacted poll taxes that seemed to only affect Black voter eligibility and boasted apparent discrimination against Blacks. Blacks had to pay different taxes and take literacy tests at the voting polls in order to vote, which prevented if not many, most from being able to vote if they lived to go down to the voting polls. This was just another form of institutionalized segregation and discrimination that wasn’t corrected until over 50 years after Blacks had gained the right to vote and it’s really a shame.



This video displays some of the struggles that Blacks faced during the summer of ’64 trying to gain the freedom to vote without the threat of harm. The bombings that these people experienced occurred after the ratification of the 24th Amendment, but I included to show the real disparities Blacks faced and how that continued even after poll taxes were removed. Poll taxes were created to prevent Blacks from voting, and once the poll taxes were abolished, more bombings and murders took place to prevent Blacks from voting.



I chose this video because it was a funny little skit (although “abolition” was spelled incorrectly) that depicted what poll taxes were like in the 1900s. I thought it was a simple educational video on poll takes, but I found difficult to find any videos on poll taxes on YouTube. I found more videos on Black Codes and Jim Crow laws…