Women's poll tax repeal movement

The women's poll tax repeal movement was a movement in the United States
predominantly led by women that attempted to secure the abolition of poll taxes as a
prerequisite for voting in the Southern states. The movement began shortly after the
ratification in 1920 of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which
granted suffrage to women. Before obtaining the right to vote, women were not obliged to
pay the tax, but shortly after the Nineteenth Amendment became law, Southern states
began examining how poll tax statutes could be applied to women. For example, North and
South Carolina exempted women from payment of the tax, while Georgia did not require
women to pay it unless they registered to vote. In other Southern states, the tax was due
cumulatively for each year someone had been eligible to vote.

History of poll taxes as a condition to voting

Payment of the tax was difficult for blacks, Hispanics, and women, primarily because their
incomes were much lower than those of white men. For married women, coverture
prevented them from controlling their own assets. Recognizing that payment of the tax as a
prerequisite to voting could lead to their disenfranchisement, women began organizing
themselves in the 1920s to repeal the poll tax laws, but the movement did not gain much
traction until the Great Depression in the 1930s. Both black and white women pressed at
state and national levels for legislative action to abolish laws that required paying to vote. In
addition, women filed a series of lawsuits to try to effect change. By the 1950s, the
intersection of sexist and racist customs and law was apparent to those fighting the poll tax.
This created collaborations between activists involved in the poll tax movement and those
active in the broader civil rights movement.

Louisiana abandoned its poll tax law in 1932, and the number of women voters increased by
77 percent. Women's activism helped bring about the repeal of poll tax legislation in Florida
in 1937, in Georgia in 1945, in Tennessee in 1953, and in Arkansas in 1964. That year, the
Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed, prohibiting poll
taxes as a barrier to voting in federal elections. Passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965
gave federal authority to the Department of Justice to institute lawsuits against the four
states that still used poll tax to disenfranchise voters in state elections. The Supreme Court
finally settled the four-decades-long struggle, abolishing the requirement to pay poll tax to
be able to vote in any election, federal or state, in their ruling on Harper v. Virginia State
Board of Elections in 1966.

Background

When the initial governing documents of the United States were created between 1776 and
1789, they established prerequisites for casting a ballot. After the passage of the
Constitution in 1789, ownership of real estate was the primary requirement for voting. As
the merchant class grew, modifications were made, instead requiring ownership of personal
property of a certain value. By the end of the American Civil War in 1865, property
requirements had been abolished in almost every state. In 1875, with the passage of a poll
tax law in Virginia, a precedent was established for using tax legislation as a means of
restricting the franchise.[1] Between 1890 and 1900, similar legislation requiring payment of
a poll tax as a prerequisite for voting became common across the South.[2] By 1914, the
constitutions of 22 states allowed for the collection of poll taxes and in 14 states the tax was
a prerequisite for voting.[3]

One of the reasons for the adoption of poll tax laws in the Progressive Era was the rise of
the leftist, agrarian Populist Party, which was seen as a threat to the prevailing two-party
system, in particular to the Democratic Party.[4][5] As Abraham Lincoln's Republican Party
had traditionally been the party with which blacks affiliated, the rise of organized,
discontented small farmers was seen as a bigger challenge to political power at the turn of
the century.[6] In principle, poll taxes were adopted to ensure that eligible voters had
sufficient financial independence to prove they were qualified and their vote could not be
bought.[7] In practice, they were often used to disenfranchise blacks and poor whites,[2] in
order to maintain supportive constituencies for business and political interests.[8] The
ramifications were deeper than political disenfranchisement, because in states where juries
were selected from those on the electoral roll, those who could not pay poll taxes were also
denied the opportunity to serve or have their case evaluated by their peers.[9][Notes 1] As
women could not vote, the tax did not apply to them until 1920, when the passage of the
Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution legally enfranchised them.[12][13]
 Tap to display image.

May Thompson Evans, c. 1940

After the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, states that had poll tax as a prerequisite
for voting responded in different ways. Some states exempted women entirely, others
defined women's obligations equally with men's, while still others left the ambiguity in the
law as an open question.[13] In Georgia, married women had no separate legal identity; as
payment of poll tax for women was seen as an extra burden on their spouse, women were
exempted if they chose not to register to vote.[14] In North Carolina, women agitated for the
abolition of the tax and were instrumental in obtaining both an exemption for women from
payment and its repeal from the state constitution in 1920.[15][16][17] Although North
Carolinians had won their fight, Carolinian activists involved in the Women's Division of the
Democratic National Committee, such as May Thompson Evans, continued to press for poll
tax repeal in other states.[18] In South Carolina, women's groups took an opposite approach
to those in most of the South. Exempted from paying poll taxes, they fought for at least a
decade to have the tax imposed upon women as recognition of their equal
status.[19][20][Notes 2]

The amount of tax was typically $1 to $2 per year[23] (equivalent to $30 to $60 in 2021[24]),
increased in some areas by cumulative tax,[Notes 3] interest, and penalties for each year a
voter had not paid but was eligible to vote, it disproportionately impacted women
voters.[25][28] Coverture[Notes 4] prevented women from legally accessing money without
their husband's consent and in some cases wages earned by wives belonged to their
spouse.[40] As men controlled the funds available to pay poll taxes, they could withhold
payment for their wives.[41] In cases where women had access to funds, they were
disadvantaged as the proportion of their income required to pay the tax was greater as
women earned far less than men. For example, white men's median income in the U.S. in
1949 was $2,255 and in 1959 was $3,734. In those years, the median income of non-white
males was $1,221 and $1,906 respectively, while white women earned $1,171 and $1,499
and non-white women earned $530 and $737.[42]

Overview of the movement

Development
…
Several court cases in the early 1920s resulted in a legal consensus that the Nineteenth
Amendment allowed enforcement of the national law without actually amending state legal
codes.[43] In other words, the federal amendment overrode state law, effectively striking out
the word "male" from any state law defining a voter by gender.[44] One of the first legal
cases involving poll tax in the South was Graves v. Eubank (87 So. 587, 205 Ala. 174,
January 13, 1921) in Montgomery County, Alabama.[44][45] Mary Lou Graves attempted to
pay her poll tax to enable her to register for the next election. The tax collector, A. H.
Eubank, refused to take her payment, prompting Graves to sue. The Supreme Court of
Alabama concurred with Graves that she could not be denied the right to pay the tax and
register.[46]

By the early 1920s, some women had begun to form anti-poll tax groups,[23] but for many
women the goal in the years following enfranchisement was to register women and to
encourage payment of the tax. Though they identified an inability to pay poll taxes as an
obstacle, most women activists did not strive for its abolition. It was not until the 1930s that
women's organizations throughout the South were involved in state and national efforts to
repeal poll tax legislation.[47] Breedlove v. Suttles (302 U.S. 277, 284), a major case heard in
1937, determined that though the Georgia election poll tax statute imposed the tax on both
men and women, women who chose not to register to vote were exempt from paying.[48][49]
The decision confirmed that voting rights were determined by the rules established by
individual states, rather than by the federal government. Thus, if states established paying
tax as a prerequisite to registering, it was within their constitutional authority.[50] As Georgia
law required payment of the tax for his spouse from the man who was the head of a family,
paying tax twice was seen as an extra financial burden on him. Non-payment also allowed
women to opt out of civic responsibilities to concentrate on motherhood.[48][50] The ruling
reinforced the view that women were second class citizens and the legal dependents of
men.[51] It solidified the constitutionality of poll tax collection as a voting prerequisite for
federal and state elections for nearly three decades.[52]

Black and white women activists in the poll tax movement often worked together,[53] as did
the organizations they represented. People contacting the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for information on voting or citizenship were
provided with materials developed by the League of Women Voters, which also held
citizenship training in conjunction with the National Association of Colored Women's
Clubs.[54] Granting women the vote had undermined the separation of the races, as the
presence of white women, registering and voting in the same election facilities as black men
and women, had a restraining effect on white men's intimidation of black would-be
voters.[55][56] In 1920 in Richmond, Virginia, The News Leader carried a story about how
black and white women were helping each other to understand the requirements to register
to vote.[57] Even so, the majority of white women did not challenge segregation policies.[58]

Women and organizations involved

…
The motivations of women in the movement differed. Some came to the anti-tax movement
from former work with women's suffrage, some from labor union activism aimed at
improving working conditions for women, and others from the early civil rights
movement.[59] Unlike the single-focus on women's rights by elite white middle- and upper-
class activists of earlier women's organizations, activists involved in the movement to repeal
poll taxes acknowledged the racial component of the struggle.[60] According to the historian
Rachel Gunter, activists "strategically deployed (and refrained from deploying) racial
arguments when it best suited their cause".[61] White women used white men's negrophobia
in their arguments for why poll taxes should be abolished.[62][63] Their reasoning was that if
white women could vote then white voters would outnumber black,[62] securing white
political power. Activists stressed that if the majority white voters did decline because of
poll tax repeal, white supremacy would still be protected by other disenfranchising policies,
especially literacy tests[63][Notes 5] and white primaries.[Notes 6] This was shown to be the
case in states which abolished the tax.[63][73] In some cases, cross-racial groups found that
building a support base for legal change required black women in the South to work in the
background, allowing white women to lead, so that their agenda was not threatening to
white males.[74]

For black women, suffrage was only part of the struggle to eliminate inequality. Members of
the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs campaigned against Jim Crow laws –
legal statutes regulating and enforcing racial segregation in the United States. They also
protested lynching and peonage, and worked to encourage voting.[75][76] Intimidation and
violence were used to prevent blacks from registering to vote and they were routinely
threatened by armed vigilantes.[77] Despite the risks, African Americans continued to press
for their rights,[78] using what influence they had and various networks[75][79] to exert a
degree of control within their communities.[79] By organizing petitions and letter drives to
political leaders, and testifying at legislative hearings, they attempted to sway public policy.
Using their personal connections, church groups, and women's organizations, they tried to
gain access to policymakers. They also created educational materials about issues and
distributed them as handbills, in newspapers or magazines, or at public lectures, hoping to
apply pressure to political leaders.[80] Though there were cases of black men who did not
support women's push for voting, there was widespread support among African Americans.
Black husbands generally welcomed female enfranchisement, did not withhold payment of
their wives' poll taxes, and saw it as a way in which black women could assist the black
community generally.[81]

Tap to display image.

Virginia Foster Durr, 1948

Virginia Foster Durr was one of the many activists who came into the movement from other
women's interest groups. Durr first became aware of the poll tax issue after going to work at
the Women's Division of the Democratic National Committee in Alabama in the 1930s.[82]
When she joined the committee, its focus was on the elimination of poll taxes to enable
white women to vote.[60] Durr moved to Virginia and became vice-chair of the poll tax
committee of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, established in 1938, and its
chair by 1939.[83] In 1941, she co-founded the National Committee to Abolish the Poll Tax
with Joseph Gelders and served as its vice-chair.[84][85] Her husband, Clifford Durr, was an
attorney with the Reconstruction Finance Corporation; he later served as a commissioner on
the Federal Communications Commission, and counsel for Rosa Parks.[86] Her brother-in-
law was Associate Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black.[85] Despite these connections, when
she attempted to register to vote during the war, Durr faced issues typical of those
encountered by prospective voters who were unfamiliar with courthouse processes. She
had to locate the registrar, who lived in a rural area; wait for officials to find the books and a
pen to record her registration; pay the taxes for two previous years and for the current year,
as required by Virginia law; and obtain a receipt. When she subsequently went to vote, her
name was not on the rolls, as she had not paid the interest due on the two years of back
taxes.[85] Durr's viewpoint changed over the course of working in the movement: she came
to believe that "discrimination against Negroes and women was all part of the exploitation of
human beings by other human beings."[87] Other women who worked with Durr included
Eleanor Bontecou, dean of Bryn Mawr College, who compiled statistical information;
Frances Wheeler Sayler, a labor organizer and civil rights activist from Montana; and Sylvia
Beitscher, Sarah d'Avila, and Katherine Shryver, who each served terms as executive
secretary of the National Committee to Abolish the Poll Tax.[88][89][90]

Tap to display image.

Mary McLeod Bethune,

founder of the National
Council of Negro Women
c. 1919[91]

Mary McLeod Bethune and Mary Church Terrell worked on committees of the Southern
Conference for Human Welfare and later the National Committee to Abolish the Poll Tax,
promoting anti-poll tax legislation among members of the National Association of Colored
Women and the National Council of Negro Women. Black women who were members of the
NAACP also worked to abolish poll taxes and in support of other civil rights legislation.[74]
They regularly sponsored drives, sometimes in conjunction with the Negro Women's League
of Voters or the Federation of Negro Women's Clubs, to encourage black women to pay
their poll taxes, register, and vote.[92]

The National Woman's Party refused to take up the issue of poll taxes, but many other
organizations joined the movement.[93] Among the most active were state branches of the
American Association of University Women, the Business and Professional Women's
Foundation, and the League of Women Voters.[94] The national organizations of these
bodies lent only cautious support, trying to maintain the cohesion of their organizations by
avoiding polarizing issues.[95] Other national organizations which took an active role
included the General Federation of Women's Clubs, the League of Women Shoppers, the
National Association of Colored Women, the National Council of Catholic Women, the
National Council of Home Demonstration Clubs, the National Council of Jewish Women, the
National Council of Negro Women, The National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, the
American Federation of Labor, the Women's Division of the Democratic National Committee,
the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, the Women's Society of
Christian Service, and the YWCA.[95]

Tactics and outcomes

…
Tactics used by groups opposing the tax included applying pressure to state legislators,
introducing federal legislation to abolish the taxes,[94][96] attempting to sway public opinion,
and bringing legal cases to the courts.[50] The Women's Division of the Democratic National
Committee, led by Mary Dewson and Eleanor Roosevelt, was concerned about the impact of
the Depression and its consequences on women's ability to pay to vote.[97] In the 1940s,
the National Committee to Abolish the Poll Tax was the primary organization working on
national legislation, until its demise in 1948 when many of its members and supporters were
investigated during the Red Scare fueled by McCarthyism.[94][98] As was typical for the
time, the organization was led and run by women who worked under male figureheads.[99]
When by the late 1940s federal legislative action had repeatedly failed, focus changed on
the issue. Thereafter, nationally, the push was to pass a federal constitutional amendment
banning poll taxes as a prerequisite for voting in federal elections,[100] which was successful
in 1964 with the ratification of the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States
Constitution.[101]

Pressure on individual state legislatures continued through the 1960s.[60] While individuals
and groups attempted to sway legislators, many women turned to the courts after
Breedlove.[48] Though some had success with their suits, and were awarded damages, poll
tax as a prerequisite for voting had effectively prevented them from participating, as by the
time their cases were heard, the elections were over.[102][103] None of the suits resulted in
overturning state law until the civil rights movement pushed for the passage of reforms,
including the Voting Rights Act of 1965.[104][105] Under the authority of this act, the
Department of Justice was able to institute federal lawsuits against the states that still had
local statutes that were excessively discriminatory in disenfranchising voters, by challenging
their constitutionality.[106][107] The matter was finally resolved, after a four-decades long
struggle, by the U.S. Supreme Court in the decision handed down in Harper v. Virginia State
Board of Elections in 1966.[23]

National efforts

The Women's Division of the Democratic National Committee began to study the impact of
paying to vote in the early 1920s and demonstrated that poll taxes were a barrier to women
being able to participate in the electoral process.[108] The national organization worked to
organize Democratic women at state level to fight for repeal with the aim of increasing their
political power and ultimately achieving an equal representation of women on all party
committees.[109] When President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced in 1938 that the tax
should be abolished, the Women's Division redoubled their efforts.[18] At that time, the
states which still had poll tax as a prerequisite to vote were Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia,
Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. Nationally, 70 percent of voters
from non-poll tax states voted in presidential-election years, but 25 percent or less
participated from states with the tax.[63] In their initial campaigns, the Women's Division
pursued a state by state policy, as had earlier suffrage campaigns, to avoid the appearance
of upsetting white supremacy.[110] The actions of the Women's Division were independent
from those of the party and had even been "forbidden" by Democratic National Committee
chair James Farley.[111]

Tap to display image.

Mary Church Terrell, 1926

Women's luncheons sponsored by the Women's Division in Alabama and Georgia served as
an incubator for the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, whose purpose was to unite
black and white southern liberals in supporting a more equal democratic and economic
system throughout the southern United States.[112] The organization united New Deal
policy-making liberals for the first time with labor union advocates in order to develop
strategies for rebuilding society.[113][114] Founded in 1938, the inaugural meeting included
Eleanor Roosevelt, Durr, and Judge Louise O. Charlton.[112] Aline Davis Hays, founder of the
League of Women Shoppers, was active in the movement to abolish poll taxes, urging her
women followers to support changes for women workers. She was targeted by the Dies
Committee in 1939, which alleged she was involved in communist activity, as were Susan B.
Anthony II, Virginia Durr, and Mary Church Terrell.[115]

By 1939, Franklin Roosevelt had distanced himself from the anti-poll tax movement, but the
Women's Division continued collecting statistics on how the tax impacted women's voting
rights.[116] A survey in 1940 found that there were well-established women's organizations
fighting for repeal in Alabama, Arkansas and Tennessee.[116] Another report, published by
Bontecou in 1942, found that the majority of women who were able to vote in the South
were widowed or single, implying the disenfranchisement of married women.[117] The
reports were distributed by the American Association of University Women to gain support
for the abolition of the poll tax.[117] Congressional hearings in 1948 heard evidence that in
1940, in the eight states requiring payment of a poll tax in order to register to vote, the total
number of citizens eligible to register was 13.6 million, but only 3 million or 22 percent paid
the poll tax. In 1942 (a non-presidential election year) only 828,000, 8 percent, actually
voted. In 1946 it was 9 percent in the seven remaining poll tax states, compared with 13
percent in the four southern states which had repealed the poll tax and 47 percent in the
non-poll tax states.[118]

In 1942, national legislation was proposed to abolish poll taxes and the women's reports
were used in hearings. The bill, introduced by Florida Senator Claude Pepper, failed. Durr,
Anthony II, and Lucy Randolph Mason participated in the hearings.[117] Reports from
Alabama women's groups were presented at the hearings by the National Women's Trade
Union League to verify that low income and a consequent inability to pay the poll tax was in
large part responsible for disenfranchising women.[119] While five bills passed the house
between 1942 and 1949 which would have banned paying to vote in federal elections, none
of them managed to pass the Senate.[117] The 1949 effort to abolish the tax was a key part
of the civil rights platform of President Harry S. Truman and was supported and
campaigned for by Congresswoman Mary Teresa Norton, chair of the Committee on House
Administration.[120] Pressure to "sell democracy to the Third World was seriously hampered
by continuing racial injustice at home", causing changes in both foreign policy initiatives and
civil rights initiatives undertaken by the government.[121]

State efforts

States which required payment of poll taxes as a prerequisite to voting when the Nineteenth
Amendment passed in 1920 were Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana,
Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.[122] Most, but
not all, of these states saw efforts by women and their organizations to repeal these taxes
over the following decades.[123]

Florida
…
 Tap to display image.

Josephine Wilkins,
president of the Georgia
chapter of the League of
Women Voters, 1934[124]

The League of Women Voters and the League of Democratic Women rallied women in
Florida to oppose poll taxes.[125][126] Women active in Florida included May J. Bradford and
Florence H. Johnston.[126] In the mid-1930s they called on the state legislature to abolish
the requirement to pay to vote, achieving success in 1937.[108]

Georgia
…
Members of the Georgia chapter of the League of Women Voters, led by Josephine Wilkins,
worked from 1924 to combat a dual registration system in Atlanta, which required voters to
register at both the city hall and the courthouse. To tackle the problem, they gained support
from the city clerk to create a mobile registration system and persuaded the National
NuGrape Company to lend them a truck. When the driver they had hired refused to drive
them, activists drove the truck themselves to designated registration locations. In a single
week, League members registered 1,500 voters and for the next decade used the mobile
registration truck to further increase voter participation.[127] The League was instrumental in
the 1945 repeal of the poll tax in Georgia,[108][128] having begun a campaign in 1938.[129]

Tennessee
…
 Tap to display image.

Dorothy Stafford, when

elected president of the
East Tennessee League of
Women Voters in 1937[130]

From the early 1930s, the Tennessee chapter of the League of Women Voters campaigned
to abolish poll taxes.[131] In 1939, the state League, led by women like Hazel Schaeffer and
Violet Bray Lindsey, prepared a bill to repeal the tax and pushed for the state legislature to
pass it.[132] Three bills were introduced to the House that year, but each was referred to a
legislative committee which took no action, and so all three failed. Two motions to work on a
constitutional amendment were also proposed; one was tabled and the other failed for lack
of a second. Two bills were also introduced that year in the Senate but never emerged from
committee.[133] Undeterred, the women, supported by the Davidson County Democratic
Women, Tennessee Federation of Labor, and the state chapter of the Congress of Industrial
Organizations, pressed for the measure again in 1941, but it was defeated in the
Senate.[134][135] State League of Women Voter members joined with the Industrial Council,
the Tennessee Farm Bureau, the Tennessee State Grange, the YWCA, and 30 other civic
and professional groups to found the Committee for Majority Rule. The goal of the group
was to continue to press for the repeal of the poll tax; its officers were Jennings Perry, chair;
Dorothy Stafford, eastern vice chair; Alton Lawrence, middle Tennessee vice chair; and
Katharine Fulling, western vice chair.[134]

In 1943, the state League lobbied the Tennessee General Assembly to immediately take up
a bill to repeal poll taxes.[136] The Assembly passed legislation, but a suit was filed by the
Polk County sheriff alleging that the repeal violated the state constitution.[137] The
Tennessee Supreme Court voided the newly passed law as unconstitutional, since the
Tennessee Constitution provided that "all male citizens shall be liable to a poll tax."[138]
Based upon that decision, the state League of Women Voters began to press for a reform of
the state constitution.[139] In 1949, women activists pressed the legislature to pass a bill
exempting women and veterans of both World Wars from paying poll taxes and secured the
promise that a constitutional convention would be placed on the November ballot.[100][140]
In 1953 a constitutional amendment was passed abolishing the poll tax as a prerequisite to
voting, and changing the state constitution to formally allow women to vote.[100][141]

Arkansas
…
In Arkansas, clubwomen were active in the fight against the poll tax, but little headway was
made after a repeal attempt in 1937 failed.[142][143] In 1958, former governor Sid McMath
was joined by state members of the League of Women Voters and labor unionists in
petitioning for a constitutional amendment to eliminate the poll tax, which again failed.[143]
In 1964, the Voter Registration Committee was formed, headed by physician and civil rights
advocate H. D. "Dave" Luck. The coalition included women from the state chapters of the
American Association of University Women, the Business and Professional Women's
Association, the League of Women Voters, and the Arkansas Education Association, as well
as civil rights leaders. They were successful in pressing for an amendment to the state
constitution, which repealed poll taxes as a prerequisite to vote and implemented a new
registration system, in 1964.[144] After Arkansas removed the tax, only Alabama, Mississippi,
Texas, and Virginia retained the poll tax as a prerequisite for voting.[145]

Texas
…
In Texas, women achieved the right to vote in state primary elections and nominating
conventions in 1918,[146] and they soon began filing test cases. For example, Alma Koy filed
suit in Texas in 1919 alleging that she had been refused the right to register to vote because
the Austin County tax collector, William Schneider, would not allow her to pay her poll
tax.[147] The district court ruled against her because the women's suffrage act was in
violation of the state constitution.[148] She appealed the case to the First Supreme Judicial
District of Texas, which upheld the district court decision, but asked the Supreme Court of
Texas to rule on the constitutionality of women's suffrage.[103][149] The state Supreme Court
upheld the right of women to vote on January 28, 1920.[147]
 Tap to display image.

Texas League of Women Voters'

poster, c. 1918

State legislation required payment of a poll tax in order to participate in elections[150] and
specified that a woman had to apply to vote at least fifteen days prior to an election and
"with her own hand" complete the proper registration.[151] This was a literacy test not
required of men: according to an article in the Austin American, its purpose was to prevent
black, immigrant, Mexican Americans, and rural women from voting.[65] In some areas,
suffragists worked across ethnic lines to help women register to vote. Louise Dietrich in El
Paso, who would serve as the state president of the League of Women Voters between
1938 and 1940, worked to organize registrations of black and Latina women who did not fall
under the restrictions of the Thomason Law (H.B. No. 104),[152][153] which targeted illiterate
and non-English-speaking voters by preventing voter assistance such as translation.[154]

The situation in Texas was complicated by xenophobia faced by the potentially large Latino
electorate.[155] The federal Expatriation Act of 1907, which automatically changed a
woman's citizenship upon marriage to that of her spouse, compounded the problem of
racial identity.[156] American-born women who married foreigners became citizens of their
husband's country and lost their entitlement to vote.[157][158] Men could vote if they filed an
affidavit that they had an intention of acquiring U.S. citizenship,[156] but unless their
husbands were citizens, women could not vote, regardless of their husband's intent to
become a citizen.[159] Women in these cases were required to provide a copy of their
marriage license and their husband's naturalization papers, since they had no individual
nationality.[160] After World War I, legislation such as the Thomason Law[154] and the alien
suffrage law of 1918, which restricted voting to citizens, curtailed the participation of
women, as well as black and immigrant groups, because prospective voters who had been
citizens for at least twenty-one years, were over age sixty-five, or were disabled could
receive assistance even if they were illiterate.[161] The federal Immigration Acts of 1921 and
1924 were passed to stem concerns that white authority was dwindling and in effect
extended segregation from blacks to other non-Anglo populations, creating separate public
facilities for other non-white groups.[162] Before World War I, Latina women were considered
to be white,[73] but after these laws were passed Hispanic voters were excluded from white
primaries.[163][164] Activists registering voters argued that they would have to redouble their
efforts in areas that were predominantly Anglo in order to prevent voter registration in areas
with large Mexican-American populations from overwhelming the Anglo vote.[165] Poll taxes
disenfranchised Mexican Americans because their low wages made payment of the tax a
hardship.[158]

Lulu B. White, president of the Houston chapter of the NAACP in the 1930s and state
director of the organization in the 1940s, worked for anti-poll tax initiatives and held rallies
against poll taxes, as part of her civil rights platform.[166][167] During World War II, the issue
of poll taxes took a backseat to the war effort, although activists like Eugenie Terry, the local
representative for the American Association of University Women, worked to keep
momentum for repeal alive.[168] The state chapter of the League of Women's Voters, along
with other women's organizations, supported electoral amendments proposed in 1949,
which allowed voters to cast ballots anonymously and would have eliminated the poll tax as
a prerequisite to voting.[169][170] The measure failed, but efforts began again in 1963 and
once again the League of Women Voters campaigned for the elimination of the system of
paying to vote.[171][172] The attempt was unsuccessful, and the poll tax system remained in
effect until February 9, 1966, when a federal three-judge panel declared that it violated the
Due Process Clause of the United States Constitution.[173][174] Though the state law
requiring payment of poll taxes in order to vote was rendered void by the decision, and the
legislature passed a resolution that year to abolish it, the amendment was not formally
approved until 2009, when it was reintroduced by Congresswoman Alma Allen.[171]

Alabama
…
 Tap to display image.

Nina Miglionico, 1932

The movement against poll taxes in Alabama was well established by 1930; it was led by
university educated, economically independent women from the state chapters of the
American Association of University Women and Federation of Business and Professional
Women's Clubs.[175] Women like Hallie Farmer, chair of the Legislative Committee for the
Alabama chapter of the Business and Professional Women's Foundation,[142] also fought to
amend laws which did not offer equal employment rights to women and disqualified them
from serving as jurors.[176] Farmer became president of Alabama Joint Legislative Council
when it formed in 1936.[177][178] This council was composed solely of delegates from seven
women's groups, which joined forces to work towards the abolition of poll tax legislation; it
included the Alabama Congress of Parents and Teachers, the state American Association of
University Women, and state Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs,
among others.[176][179] Nina Miglionico, a lawyer and legal advisor to the group, brought in
other professional women such as Dorah Sterne, an activist working on prison reform, and
Delphine Feminear Thomas, director of the state Women's Division.[180] Mildred Ellis Martin,
former president of the Austin, Texas branch of the American Association of University
Women, was also involved in the movement;[181] as was Mary Lee Emerson, legislative chair
of the Alabama chapter of the American Association of University Women.[182]

Tap to display image.

Poll Tax receipt for Rosa Boyles of Jefferson County,

Alabama, October 22, 1920

In 1936, the faculty of Alabama College, the state college for women, launched a project to
research the impact of paying to vote on women.[180] The study, authored by Minnie
Steckel, found that the lack of electoral participation was primarily because of the poll tax
requirement, rather than disinterest. By the late 1930s, individual white women working on
abolishing poll taxes in Alabama, but not the organizations to which they belonged,
recognized the benefit of black and white activists joining forces to increase their political
agency.[183] Other women's groups participating in the early 1940s included the Alabama
chapter of the Federations of Women's Clubs, the Alabama Congress of Parents and
Teachers, the Alabama Council of Home Demonstration Clubs, the Alabama Home
Economics Association, the Montgomery Council of Jewish Women, and the Society of
Christian Service for the Alabama Methodist Church.[184] In 1944, the Alabama legislature
passed a law exempting World War II veterans and active service personnel from poll taxes.
Given the large number of men exempted, women activists argued that the exemption
placed the burden of paying the poll tax on women.[185] In 1946, Miglionico worked with
branches of the American Association of University Women to compile state and local
statistics on Jim Crow laws and their impact. She also surveyed women who were non-
voters. Her research found "blatant race-based inequalities" and an inability to pay poll
taxes as the reason many women failed to participate.[186] Her reports began a process of
examining commonalities in sexism and racism by the American Association of University
Women.[186] Mary Fair Burks founded the Women's Political Council, which would later
spearhead the bus boycott, in Montgomery in 1946;[187] it sought to improve the status of
black people and to fight for their civil rights, including the right to vote.[188][189]

Tap to display image.

Mary Fair Burks, 1976

In 1947, a bill to eliminate poll taxes was defeated in the Alabama Legislature. Women
activists not only continued to push for repeal, they began organizing fund raisers, such as
bake sales, to raise money to assist their members in paying the taxes. The Alabama Joint
Legislative Council had grown to incorporate an additional 16 women's groups, including
representatives from the Alabama Women Lawyers' Association, the American Federation of
Labor, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, and the National Farmers Union. The state
chapter of the League of Women Voters, which had been inactive since the Great
Depression, reorganized in the early 1950s with the aim of eliminating the poll tax
requirement.[190] In 1953, the state legislature passed a bill shortening the cumulative
collection period from twenty-four to two years.[27][191] Women's groups saw this as a
victory but continued their efforts to help women pay the tax.[192] The political climate, with
the election of successive pro-segregationist governors, did not allow reintroduction of
anti-poll tax legislation.[188][193] Alabama's law remained in place until it was partially
nullified by the Twenty-fourth Amendment, which barred a poll tax in federal elections, in
1964.[101][188] A three-judge federal panel ruled that the Alabama statute requiring a poll tax
as a prerequisite to voting was a violation of the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution on March 3, 1966.[194]

Virginia
…
In Virginia the anti-poll tax movement began in the 1920s.[195] Among the organizations
active in the movement were the Virginia chapter of the Federations of Women's Clubs, the
Parents and Wives of Fighting Americans, the Virginia Electoral Reform League, the Virginia
Reform League, and the Virginia Teacher's Association.[196] As early as 1932, the state
League of Women Voters warned that inability to pay the tax, because of high
unemployment, would have an impact on elections.[197] From the late 1930s, feminist
members of the Women's Division of the Democratic National Committee began to fight to
repeal the tax.[60] Attempts were made in 1941 and 1945 by the state legislature to revise
the pay to vote method, but the 1941 effort was a failure and the 1945 bid resulted in a
committee study, which delayed any action until 1949.[198] That year, the Campbell
Amendments, based upon the committee study, were put on the November ballot.[199] The
amendments were vaguely worded and referred only to what sections of the constitution
were to be changed without providing a method to eliminate the poll tax or a new
registration procedure. This resulted in the League of Women Voters, the NAACP, the
YWCA, and other groups which had been pressing for repeal, opposing their
adoption.[200][201][202] The amendments were defeated 206,542 to 56,687.[203]

The legislative session of 1950 began with a push from Beatrice Foster, president of the
state chapter of the League of Women Voters, continuing the repeal efforts.[204] A bill
passed the state House, but died in a Senate committee.[205] The following year, the League
conducted a public survey and, based upon its results, began a campaign, led by Carolyn
Planck of Arlington, to eliminate the poll tax.[206] Planck and delegates from the Councils of
both Catholic and Jewish Women, the Federation of Women's Clubs, and the Junior
Chamber of Commerce, met with the legislature in 1952, speaking in support of a poll tax
repeal bill.[207] As in 1950, the bill passed the House but never made it out of committee in
the Senate.[205] Hearings were held in 1954, by joint committees of the Virginia General
Assembly, to determine whether poll tax as a prerequisite to voting should be
abolished.[208] Among those who spoke on behalf of repealing poll taxes were Adele Clark
from the Virginia Council of Catholic Women; Naomi Cohn, representing the YWCA;
Florence Lewis, a Miami, Florida activist and board member of the National Council of
Jewish Women; and Lois Van Valkenburgh, director of the League of Women Voters' poll tax
committee and other leaders from the Virginia Teacher's Association and the Virginia Voters
League.[209] Neither legislative body was willing to put forward a resolution in 1954 or 1956,
in part because their focus was on the prevention of school desegregation.[205]

Women from Virginia continued to press for abolition of the poll tax on both the federal and
state level into the 1960s. Bills were introduced again in 1962 in both houses of the
legislature, but did not advance.[210] The following year, Ethel R. McDonald, president of the
state League of Women Voters led a campaign, bringing together activists from church,
civic, labor and political organizations throughout the state to fight for the abolition of the
poll tax.[211][212] Members of the Virginia chapter of the American Association of University
Women were also involved in repeal efforts.[213] Those who testified at the legislative
session in 1963 included McDonald; Lavinia J. Banks for the Virginia Teachers' Association;
Hazel K. Barger, representing the Republican National Committee; Elaine Julia Kobylanski
Byrd of Waynesboro, state legislative chair of the American Association of University
Women; Dorothy Hirst of the Women's Democratic Club; and Thelma Ohmsen, representing
the Richmond Diocesan Council of Catholic Women.[212] Court cases brought by African-
American women and men finally ended the practice of using the poll tax to limit voting in
Virginia.[214] Their briefs showed that poverty, as well as race, impacted women as a
class.[215] On March 25, 1966, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the state statute requiring
poll taxes as a prerequisite for voting violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S.
Constitution's Equal Protection Clause and was therefore void.[216]

Mississippi
…
There was little participation in the movement by women in Mississippi.[217] There were
many factors which effected the low participation rate,[218] including higher levels of deadly
violence by the Ku Klux Klan than in any other Southern state,[219] the highest population of
blacks in the country, and the lowest median income, education levels, and black voting
registrations in the nation.[218] It also charged the highest rate of poll taxes in the
nation.[220] There was no action by the state legislature towards repeal, and so no state-
wide referendum occurred,[221] although individual women filed legal cases challenging the
poll tax statutes.[142][222] On April 8, 1966, a three-judge federal panel determined
Mississippi's poll tax as a requirement to vote was void.[223]

Cases brought by women

A large proportion of cases filed to challenge poll tax statutes were brought by women.[48]
Lawsuits on poll tax were filed on a variety of issues including ineligibility because of age or
residence,[224][225] on the basis that it violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal
Protection and Due Process Clauses,[226] because it violated the Twenty-fourth
Amendment,[142] and because it violated a Supreme Court ruling.[222]

One of the earliest cases dealt with the age of the voter and whether tax could be collected
from someone who attained their majority, and so eligibility to vote, in an election year.[227]
Dorothy Bentley Jones was a member of the Parents and Wives of Fighting Americans
organization and the Virginia Electoral Reform League.[48] She first filed suit on the issue of
poll taxes in 1944 in the federal courts.[224] Jones, who had turned 21 in May 1944, was
attempting to register for the first time. Hazeltine Settle, the registrar for Roanoke,
attempted to collect taxes for 1945 from Jones as a prerequisite for registering to vote.[227]
Virginia law at the time required payment for the two previous years and for the current
year, with interest and penalties if the previous years tax had not already been paid, in order
to be eligible to vote.[85][227] Jones refused payment, contending she had not been eligible
to vote prior to 1944 and the first year for which she could be assessed the tax was 1945,
which was not yet due.[224][227] Jones, an African-American woman and the wife of an army
corporal, was represented by New York lawyer Arthur Dunn and Roanoke attorney Moss
Plunkett.[224][228] Her case was successful in confirming that Virginia voters who attained
voting age in an election year, prior to the election, were not subject to paying poll tax, but
had to register a minimum of 30 days prior to the election to be eligible to participate that
year.[227] In 1947, Jones initiated a second suit when she was denied the right to vote for
failure to pay poll taxes for 1945 and 1946.[229] She contended per the answer of the
Attorney General of Virginia, Abram Staples, in her previous case, that payment of poll tax
was not a qualification of determining voter fitness, that if payment of poll tax was purely a
prerequisite to voting then it was an unconstitutional burden. Her argument was that the
Constitution of Virginia, in requiring poll taxes be paid in order to vote, deprived Virginia
voters of the rights and privileges of United States citizens under the federal
constitution.[230] Failing to receive a timely response from the defendants, Jones asked for
a summary judgment in her favor. The district court ruled against her. The promise by
federal congressional leaders of passage of a pending anti-poll tax bill led to her to abandon
a planned appeal.[231]

Eileen S. Evans filed suit in Virginia, in 1944, over poll tax irregularities. She and her
husband, a private in the U.S. Army, relocated to the state in July 1943 from West
Virginia.[232] The following January, Evans went to the courthouse to request information
about voting. She was informed that as she was not a resident of the state on January 1,
1943, no taxes were due from her to register for 1944, but that she had to register before
October 7. Friends advised her to seek a second opinion and she returned to the
courthouse to inquire again. She was advised that an amendment to the law did require her
to pay a poll tax for 1943. She paid the assessment in September 1944 and registered to
vote. In November, Evans was not allowed to vote in the election, as she had not paid the
tax six months prior to the election. She then challenged the constitutionality of the poll tax.
Attorney General Staples concurred with the allegations and Jones was awarded damages
and a judgment was entered in her favor; this allowed the state to avoid a federal hearing on
whether charging a poll tax was a valid voting qualification.[225]

In December 1949, Jessie Butler, an African-American woman, was refused the right to
register to vote in Virginia because of unpaid poll taxes.[233][234] She filed suit against the
registrar of Arlington, Mary A. Thompson, claiming that the requirement to pay poll tax was
enacted to disenfranchise black voters and violated federal equal protection laws.[233][235]
The federal district court denied her request to convene a three-judge statutory court to
evaluate the constitutional questions. Butler appealed to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals
which ruled that a statutory court should be convened.[236] The three-judge panel ruled
that the tax was fair and equally administered, regardless of why it had been enacted.[233]
The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the decision in 1951.[236]

In 1964, Victoria Gray and Ceola Wallace, black women from Hattiesburg, Mississippi,
challenged the state poll tax law on the grounds that it violated the recently passed Twenty-
fourth Amendment by limiting their ability to vote.[142][237] After ratification of the Twenty-
fourth Amendment, which outlawed poll taxes as a qualification for voting in federal
elections, the Mississippi Legislature had enacted a measure requiring voters to obtain a
receipt for non-payment of the taxes. A three-judge federal panel declared the law
unconstitutional, as it hampered registered voters from casting their ballots. The ruling did
not abolish the poll tax in Mississippi for state elections.[238]
 Tap to display image.

Evelyn Butts, 1966

Also in 1964, Annie E. Harper, who was joined by Gladys Berry and Curtis and Myrtle Burr,
brought suit against the Virginia Board of Elections arguing that the poll tax denied them
equal protection because they were poor.[239] Evelyn Thomas Butts filed a separate
complaint, which was combined with the Harper litigants as a companion suit.[104][240] Her
fellow plaintiffs were variously reliant on social security, their children's or their husbands'
earnings or disability benefit. All were on low incomes and each had child care
responsibilities.[104][241] As with prior cases, it was dismissed, appealed and then referred
for adjudication by a three-judge panel in the Eastern District Court of Virginia. The judges
ruled that poll taxes were constitutional citing Breedlove.[104][241] The cases were appealed
to the Supreme Court, which ruled in Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections (383 U.S.
663, 1966) that Virginia's poll tax violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection
and Due Process Clauses. Justice William O. Douglas wrote in the majority opinion, "Wealth,
like race, creed, or color, is not germane to one's ability to participate intelligently in the
electoral process."[242] The ruling affirmed that the right to vote was fundamental and could
not be conditional upon paying a tax.[242] It was a landmark decision, eliminating the poll tax
as a barrier to state and federal elections.[243][244]

In 1966, Bessie Mae Huntley, Mary Helen Kohn, Joe Booker, and Robert Buchanan filed suit
against the Holmes County, Mississippi Board of Supervisors. The plaintiffs, who were all
black citizens, said the poll tax had prevented them from voting in a recent bond issue to
improve the County Community Hospital. They asked the Federal District Court in Jackson
to restrain the county from implementing the bond issue until an election including all
eligible voters could be held.[222] On April 2, 1966, the court refused to grant an
injunction,[245] but six days later the same court, with a different three-judge panel, ruled on
a case brought by the Justice Department under the Voting Rights Act that the Mississippi
poll tax was unconstitutional.[246][247]

Impact of repeal

In 1934, poll taxes were repealed in Louisiana, increasing the number of men who voted by
25 percent and the number of women voting by nearly 100 percent.[27][Notes 7] After Georgia
repealed the tax, voter turnout rose from 16.9 percent to 30.3 percent of eligible voters;[249]
immediately after the poll tax laws were repealed the vote in congressional elections more
than doubled.[118] In Florida turnout was 46 percent higher for the 1940 presidential
election than in 1936[118][249] and in Tennessee turnout rose 12 percent after poll taxes were
abolished.[249] When Alabama eliminated payment of poll taxes in 1953 for citizens over 45,
an additional 200,000 white women registered to vote the following year.[250] Before the
poll tax in Arkansas was abolished, 80 percent of the adult population in the state was
prevented from voting by the prerequisite;[251] when it was removed, registrations for the
1970 general election increased by 23.18 percent.[252] After elimination of the poll tax in
Texas, party primary participation in Houston by women, people under age 40, voters with
Spanish surnames, and blue collar workers exceeded the portion of the electorate that had
formerly paid poll taxes.[253] Of particular note was the dramatic rise from 1.6 percent to 7.2
percent in Mexican-American registrations as a proportion of the total of registered
voters.[254] In Mississippi black registrations to vote rose from 6.9 percent of total
registrations in 1964 to 59.8 percent in 1967.[218]

In 1952 there was a 21 percent difference in the registration rates of men and women in the
South compared with a 5 percent difference in the rest of the United States and the voter
participation rate in the south among women was a quarter of women's participation
elsewhere.[255] By 1980, Southern women registered at almost the same rate as men and
were more likely than men to cast ballots in elections.[256] Overall, the U.S. voter turnout in
the non-Southern states was in decline over the period from 1956 to 2000, whereas in the
South voter turnout during the same period more than doubled.[257] The removal of barriers
such as poll taxes, grandfather clauses,[Notes 8] and literacy tests contributed to increased
registration and voter turnout, especially for blacks, women, and poor whites in the
South.[261] Other factors included the increasing proportion of women working outside the
home and increased political engagement by Southern women.[256] In part, greater political
involvement had to do with new organizations like the National Organization for Women and
the National Women's Political Caucus.[262] By the late 1960s and early 1970s, Southern
states had similar turnout rates to the rest of the country.[261]

Passage of the Twenty-fourth Amendment in 1964, which abolished poll taxes in federal
elections, did not stop Southern states from continuing to use the poll tax to restrict voting
in local and state elections.[101] At the time of its passage, an estimated 4 million people of
color and people on low-incomes were prevented from voting by poll taxes.[263] In an effort
to override state noncompliance, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed.[101] It
"authorized the Department of Justice to enjoin states employing poll taxes as a
precondition to voting".[106] In other words, the Voting Rights Act gave federal oversight to
election procedures, enabling the attorney general to challenge the use of disenfranchising
provisions, such as poll taxes and literacy tests, on the grounds that they were
discriminatory. Using that power, in 1966, the federal courts nullified the remaining state
statutes in Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas which required the payment of poll taxes as a
prerequisite for voting.[264] In 1975, under pressure from the Chicano movement, the Voting
Rights Act's protections were extended to cover linguistic minorities, including American
Indians, Asian Americans, Native Alaskans, and Hispanic and Latino Americans.[107]

Historic significance

Contrary to pre-1970s popular and academic beliefs, American women's rights activists
continued their activism during the interwar and post-war periods, as is demonstrated by
their involvement in the movement to repeal poll taxes.[265] Until the early 1970s, academics
did not focus on women's history, their issues, or their political cultures.[266] Scholars have
characterized feminism as the struggle for socio-economic and political rights in the United
States. They have suggested that first-wave feminism lasted from the 1850s to the 1920s,
with the struggle not resuming until second-wave feminism began in the 1960s.[267][268]
Other women's historians identified the interwar and immediate post-war periods as a time
of little feminist activity.[269] In 1983, historians Joan M. Jensen and Lois Scharf asserted
that feminist activists between 1920 and 1940 lived complex lives full of hidden
barriers.[270] Scholarship on the period confirms that women continued to strive to expand
their rights, but were restricted by changes in the economic, political, and social structures
and institutions, which made it difficult to organize and maintain the women's
movement.[59][271] Societal concerns over the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold
War pushed women's issues into the background. Women continued to function within
organizational structures, but they were often doing so in a hostile environment. Their
activities were perceived as threatening to the traditional way of life of
Americans.[272][273][274] Media outlets routinely refused to give feminist issues coverage
and often recharacterized reform efforts as men's issues.[275]

Women and people of color in the South were not apathetic in the fight for voting rights,[276]
although historians and political scientists before the 21st century often characterized
Southern women as indifferent to political matters in the interwar and immediate post-war
periods.[277] Their efforts toward abolishing the federal poll tax became the first step in the
significant changes to voting rights which would be enshrined in the Voting Rights Act of
1965.[278] Sara Alpern and Dale Baum found in their study, Female Ballots: The Impact of
the Nineteenth Amendment, published in 1985, that there was a overall decline in voting
after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. They concluded by using a comparison of
men and women's election participation statistics to demonstrate that women were not
apathetic.[276] Instead, measures such as literacy tests, responsible for 90 percent of the
disenfranchisement of African Americans, and poll taxes – which disenfranchised women,
the poor, and people of color – impacted the ability to vote.[279] V. O. Key, a political
scientist and historian of U.S. elections, who was a recognized expert during the mid-
century period, and other academics, minimized the role of women and African Americans
in the poll tax reform movement.[280][281] Works by other scholars such as the attorney and
legal historian, Ronnie L. Podolefsky, and the history professor, Sarah Wilkerson Freeman,
have re-analyzed the efforts to repeal poll taxes and concluded that women were a
significant force.[142][282][283] The movement to repeal poll tax laws is significant as it
illustrates how the struggle for rights for blacks and white women converged by the
1950s.[277]

Notes

k. Trial by a jury of one's peers is a concept enshrined in English law by virtue of Magna
Carta and in U.S. law through the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
It is designed to ensure that persons accused of a crime have impartial fellow citizens
weighing the evidence presented at trial.[10] It is also designed to curtail the power of
the state and agents of the law, who enforce compliance with legal statutes.[11]

l. Repeal of the poll tax as a prerequisite to voting in South Carolina was approved by
voters in 1950 and adopted by the legislature as an amendment to the state
constitution in 1951.[21][22]

m. For example, Nolen Breedlove, the plaintiff in Breedlove v. Suttles was required to pay
7 years of unpaid taxes to register in Georgia in 1936.[25] Voters in Alabama could be
 charged up to 24 years in arrears, as they were required to pay from the time they
became eligible to vote at age 21 until they reached age 45,[26] prior to the maximum
arrears being restricted to 2 years in 1953.[27]

n. The first statute to define citizenship and naturalization in the United States was the
Naturalization Act of 1790. While it did not preclude women from citizenship, the legal
system of the United States had absorbed coverture from English law.[29] Under this
practice, the control of the physical body of a married woman, and thus any rights to
her person or property, belonged to her husband and her loyalty to her spouse was
considered to be more important than her obligation to the state.[30] Ending coverture
in the United States required a lengthy process of legislation through several
decades.[31] Judicial rulings on domestic relations held that infants, slaves, and women
were unable to participate in public life, because they lacked discernment and the right
to free will and property. To ensure proper behavior and morality, conflicts of loyalty
were to be avoided.[32][33] Until 1922, when the Cable Act was passed, a woman in the
United States was required to give up her citizenship in favor of her husband's on
marriage.[34][35] Amendments to the Cable Act continued until 1940, when married
women were granted their own nationality without restriction.[36] Until the 1960s,
differences in legislation between the states gave women extremely different civil
rights depending upon their residency; over time the federal system gave them
additional rights in certain areas.[37] Remnants of coverture remained in U.S. law even
after passage of the Equal Pay Act of 1963, eliminating wage disparity on the basis of
sex and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbade discrimination on the basis of race,
color, religion, sex, or national origin.[38] Married women were unable to obtain credit in
their own names and single women were denied credit on the basis that they were
unmarried until the passage of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act in 1974.[39] Until 1975
married women were legally obligated in every state to allow their husbands access to
their bodies for sex. That year, New York state passed legislation removing the
requirement.[31] Birthright citizenship derived from the mother for children born abroad
before 1934 was not confirmed until 1989.[34]

o. Literacy tests were enacted to confirm that potential voters could read. It was
essentially a means of eliminating potential voters who were uneducated, which was
usually because they were poor.[64] The tests were often arbitrarily applied to people
of color, rural voters likely to have limited education, women, and foreigners.[65][66]
They could include questions such as "How many bubbles are in a bar of soap?" or
asking a potential voter to interpret a section of the state constitution.[67] Literacy
tests were not limited to Southern states, but existed throughout the United States to
 disenfranchise Native Alaskans and American Indians; Hispanics in the Southwest and
Western United States, as well as Puerto Ricans on the East Coast; and non-English
speaking Asian-Americans.[68][69][70] Passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 allowed
the federal government oversight to override discriminatory literacy tests.[71]

q. White primaries were abolished by the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Smith v. Allwright
in 1944.[72]

r. Huey Long (former governor and United States Senator) and his political machine led
the movement to repeal poll tax in Louisiana.[248]

s. Grandfather clauses guaranteed that men whose fathers or grandfathers had voted
before the Civil War and before passage of the Fifteenth Amendment were eligible as
voters.[258] As most blacks' grandfathers had been slaves, they were ineligible to be
voters under such clauses. Whites, however, were eligible, even if they could not pass
property requirements or literacy tests used as prerequisites to voting registration.[259]
Grandfather clauses with regard to voting were overturned as unconstitutional by the
Supreme Court decision in Guinn v. United States (238 U.S. 347) in 1915.[260]

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r. Monopoli 2020, p. 74.

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sk. Schuyler 2006, pp. 32–34.

sl. Podolefsky 1998, pp. 861, 876.

sm. Podolefsky 1998, pp. 859, 867.

sn. Lawson 1999, p. 62.

so. Podolefsky 1998, p. 859.

sq. Brown 2012.

sr. Podolefsky 1998, p. 864.

ss. Podolefsky 1998, pp. 850, 867, 882.

st. Scott 2011.

tu. The Alabama Tribune 1957, p. 2.

tk. Smith 2003, p. 214.

tl. Schuyler 2006, pp. 50–51.

tm. Podolefsky 1998, pp. 867–868.

 tn. Podolefsky 1998, p. 866.

to. Podolefsky 1998, p. 868.

tq. Poynter & Poynter 1949, p. 20.

tr. Wilkerson-Freeman 2002, p. 338.

ts. Durr 1985, pp. 1, 4.

tt. Podolefsky 1998, pp. 866–867.

kuu. Wilkerson-Freeman 2002, p. 349.

kuk. Archer & Muller 2020.

kul. Ogden 1958, pp. 274–277.

kum. Koy v. Schneider 1920.

kun. Tarter 2020.

kuo. Ackerman & Nou 2009, p. 4.

kuq. Richardson 2020, p. 456.

kur. Richomme 2015.

kus. Wilkerson-Freeman 2002, p. 340.

kut. Wilkerson-Freeman 2002, pp. 341, 343.

kku. Wilkerson-Freeman 2002, p. 343.

kkk. Wilkerson-Freeman 2002, p. 344.

kkl. Wilkerson-Freeman 2002, p. 345.

kkm. Johnson 2010, p. 87.

kkn. Lichtenstein 1989, p. 124.

kko. Podolefsky 1998, pp. 877–878.

kkq. Wilkerson-Freeman 2002, p. 346.

kkr. Wilkerson-Freeman 2002, p. 348.

kks. U.S. Senate 1948, pp. 9706–9707.

kkt. Wilkerson-Freeman 2002, pp. 355–356.

klu. The Greenwood Commonwealth 1949, p. 1.

klk. Podolefsky 1998, p. 885.

kll. Erb 2018.

klm. Podolefsky 1998, pp. 858, 866–867.

kln. The Atlanta Constitution 1934, p. 11.

klo. The Orlando Sentinel 1935, p. 8.

klq. The Miami Tribune 1936, p. 6.

klr. Schuyler 2006, p. 45.

kls. The Atlanta Constitution 1945, p. 7.

klt. Whitney 1995, p. 15.

kmu. The Knoxville News-Sentinel 1937, p. 6.

kmk. The Knoxville News-Sentinel 1933, p. 4.

kml. The Chattanooga Daily Times 1939, p. 11.

kmm. McNeill 1941, p. 2.

kmn. The Tennessean 1941, pp. 1, 4.

kmo. Fulling 1941, p. 2.

kmq. The Tennessean 1943a, pp. 1, 8.

kmr. The Tennessean 1943b, p. 1.

kms. The Jackson Sun 1943, p. 1.

kmt. Hixon 1949, p. 2.

knu. Hixon 1949, pp. 1–2.

knk. The Knoxville News-Sentinel 1953, p. 18.

knl. Podolefsky 1998, p. 867.

knm. Ledbetter Jr. 1995, p. 140.

knn. Graves 2018.

kno. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram 1964, p. 3.

knq. Gunter 2017, p. 80.

knr. The Southwestern Political Science Quarterly 1920, p. 184.

kns. The Galveston Daily News 1920, p. 1.

knt. The Southwestern Political Science Quarterly 1920, p. 185.

kou. Gunter 2017, p. 87.

kok. Gunter 2017, p. 86.

kol. Gunter 2017, p. 136.

kom. League of Women Voters 2018.

kon. Gunter 2017, pp. 136–137.

koo. Gunter 2017, pp. 10, 76–77, 137.

koq. Gunter 2017, p. 5.

kor. Hacker 2014, p. 2.

kos. Taranto & Zarnow 2020, p. 53.

kot. Gunter 2017, p. 3.

kqu. Gunter 2017, p. 81.

kqk. Gunter 2017, pp. 83–84.

kql. MacDonald 2014.

kqm. Texas Politics Project 2020.

kqn. Gunter 2017, p. 4.

kqo. Gunter 2017, p. 137.

kqq. Pitre 2020.

kqr. Pitre 2010, p. 55.

kqs. Podolefsky 1998, p. 872.

kqt. The Austin American 1947, p. 2.

kru. Long 1949, pp. 1–2.

krk. Stone 2018.

krl. The Monitor 1963.

krm. The Baytown Sun 1966, p. 6.

krn. The Odessa American 1966, pp. 1–2.

kro. Wilkerson-Freeman 2002, pp. 349–350.

krq. Wilkerson-Freeman 2002, p. 350.

krr. Podolefsky 1998, p. 865.

krs. Wilkerson-Freeman 2002, p. 351.

krt. Podolefsky 1998, pp. 852, 866.

ksu. Wilkerson-Freeman 2002, p. 352.

ksk. Wilkerson-Freeman 2002, p. 364.

ksl. Kilpatrick 1942, p. 32.

ksm. Wilkerson-Freeman 2002, p. 353.

ksn. The Cullman Tribune 1941, p. 2.

kso. Wilkerson-Freeman 2002, p. 356.

ksq. Wilkerson-Freeman 2002, p. 357.

ksr. Barnett 2001, p. 133.

kss. Wilkerson-Freeman 2002, p. 360.

kst. Berkhalter 2006, p. 22.

ktu. Wilkerson-Freeman 2002, p. 358.

ktk. Ogden 1958, pp. 230, 233–236.

ktl. Wilkerson-Freeman 2002, pp. 358–359.

ktm. Thornton III 2016, p. 201.

ktn. The Anniston Star 1966, p. 1.

kto. The Daily Press 1945, p. 2.

ktq. Podolefsky 1998, pp. 868–869.

ktr. Stewart 1932, p. 4.

kts. Ogden 1958, pp. 203–205.

ktt. Ogden 1958, p. 207.

luu. Ogden 1958, pp. 208–209.

luk. Edwards, III 1973, pp. 175–177.

lul. The Times-Dispatch 1949, p. 25.

lum. Ogden 1958, p. 213.

lun. The Danville Bee 1950, p. 1.

luo. Ogden 1958, p. 215.

luq. The Times-Dispatch 1951, p. 10.

lur. Davis 1952, p. 4.

lus. Latimer 1954, p. 1.

lut. Latimer 1954, p. 3; Daffron 1954, p. 3; The Miami Herald 1967, p. D1; The News Leader
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lku. The Danville Register 1962, p. 2.

lkk. The Progress-Index 1963, p. 9.

lkl. The Times-Dispatch 1963b, p. 6.

lkm. The Times-Dispatch 1963a, p. 26.

lkn. Podolefsky 1998, p. 886.

lko. Podolefsky 1998, p. 887.

lkq. The Danville Register 1966, pp. 1, 2.

lkr. Ogden 1958, p. 201.

lks. Terchek 1980, p. 28.

lkt. Cunningham 2013, p. 191.

llu. DeSilver 2014.

llk. Walton Jr., Puckett & Deskins Jr. 2012, p. 473.

lll. The Clarion-Ledger 1966, p. 8.

llm. The Delta Democrat-Times 1966, p. 1.

lln. The Times-Dispatch 1944a, p. 1, Section 2.

llo. Ogden 1958, pp. 275–276.

llq. Ellis 2009, pp. 1046, 1049.

llr. The Times-Dispatch 1944b, p. 6.

lls. The Daily Press 1944, p. 2.

llt. U.S. Senate 1947, p. 292.

lmu. U.S. Senate 1947, pp. 292–293.

lmk. Ogden 1958, p. 277.

lml. U.S. Senate 1947, p. 291.

lmm. Ellis 2009, p. 1046.

lmn. The Times-Dispatch 1950b, p. 4.

lmo. The Times-Dispatch 1950a, p. 2B.

lmq. Ogden 1958, p. 279.

lmr. The Greenwood Commonwealth 1964, p. 1.

lms. Boothe 1964, p. 1.

lmt. Podolefsky 1998, pp. 869–870.

lnu. Podolefsky 1998, p. 870.

lnk. Ellis 2009, p. 1048.

lnl. Ellis 2009, p. 1049.

lnm. Smentkowski 2019.

lnn. Ellis 2009, p. 1050.

lno. Hall 1966, p. 10.

lnq. The Alabama Journal 1966, p. 10.

lnr. The Hattiesburg American 1966, p. 1.

lns. Ogden 1958, pp. 123–124.

lnt. Lackey 1965, p. 426.

lou. Wilkerson-Freeman 2002, p. 359.

lok. Anderson 2018, pp. 19–20.

lol. Ledbetter Jr. 1995, p. 162.

lom. Nimmo & McCleskey 1969, pp. 692–693.

lon. Nimmo & McCleskey 1969, p. 692.

loo. Fullerton & Stern 2010, pp. 132, 134.

loq. Fullerton & Stern 2010, p. 160.

lor. Fullerton & Borch 2008, p. 759.

los. Shapiro 1993, p. 537.

lot. Greenblatt 2013.

lqu. Jordan 1985, p. 398.

lqk. Fullerton & Borch 2008, pp. 759, 762.

lql. Fullerton & Stern 2010, p. 162.

lqm. Richardson 2020, p. 455.

lqn. The Odessa American 1966, pp. 1–2; The Anniston Star 1966, p. 1; The Delta
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lqo. Podolefsky 1998, pp. 840, 862; Scharf & Jensen 1987, p. 4; Benson 1984, p. 119; May
1988.

lqq. Arthur 2016, pp. 21–23.

lqr. Montague & Tambe 2020, p. 27.

lqs. Molony & Nelson 2017, p. 3.

lqt. Benson 1984, p. 119.

lru. Benson 1984, pp. 119–120.

lrk. Scharf & Jensen 1987, p. 4.

lrl. May 1988.

lrm. Podolefsky 1998, p. 840.

lrn. Scharf & Jensen 1987, pp. 12–13.

lro. Podolefsky 1998, p. 871.

lrq. Wilkerson-Freeman 2002, p. 336.

lrr. Wilkerson-Freeman 2002, p. 335.

lrs. Terchek 1980, p. 25.

lrt. Wilkerson-Freeman 2002, p. 337.

lsu. Johnson 2010, p. 94.

lsk. The Boston Globe 1963, p. 5.

lsl. Johnson 2010, pp. 93–94.

lsm. Kerber 1998, p. 119.

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