Poll Tax Redux

Harry Truman was President of the United States when I was born, but being preoccupied by maturation, I recall nothing about "give 'em hell Harry." But I was old enough to remember the re-election of Dwight D. Eisenhower.

What I remember was being in our Dallas apartment, the room was cool. It was cold outside. My father came in, took off his overcoat, and handed me a little paper American flag stuck to a tiny stick.

"Where'd juh git dat?" I asked.
"I got it when I paid my poll tax," he said.

I didn't know it then, of course, but the poll tax was a tax levied against anyone who wanted to cast a vote. The poll tax was intended to disenfranchise poor people, to discourage the "inappropriate" voters. Inappropriate voters were generally seen as people of color, poor people, and the inebriated, but mostly, in the United States, the inappropriate voters were people of color, and among them it was mostly black people. The poll tax was institutionalized racism. Younger voters may have no experience with the institutional racism that was integral to the United States. But it existed, and it is not part of our ancient past. This didn't happen a long time ago. Institutional racism and wide spread prejudice against people just because of the color of their skin is recent.

I remember going to Sears with my mother and needing to pee. I told my mother I needed to potty and she said I would have to wait because there was no place close where I could go. I pointed out a rest room right next to where we were standing and she told me we couldn't go in there, because, "that was the colored bathroom."

While the poll tax has existed off and on throughout history in countries all around the world, it has an interesting recent history in the United States. The poll tax stemmed back to the 1880s when members of the Populist Party started working to create a coalition of African Americans, and poor, lower class white people and to get them registered to vote, and to actually casting votes. This voter action in the South was viewed as a threat to white supremacy. If this voting was not nipped in the bud it was possible that laws, and rights might come in to being that disadvantaged those whites who had been in charge for as long as anyone could remember, and could actually give rights, and advantages to backs, Indians, Mexicans, and poor white trash.

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All across the South, the ruling white class, the planters, merchants, and industrialists moved to protect and preserve their power, and the method for suppressing these unacceptable voters was to pass a deliberately prohibitive poll tax. The threatened and fearful white big shots through out the South were spectacularly effective. African-Americans, often referred to by the "N word," as well as the poor whites, often referred to as "poor white trash," simply could not afford to pay the poll tax and therefore they lost their right to vote.

Institutional racism existed, especially in the South. Institutional racism mandated that there be separate public toilets, separate drinking fountains, separate schools, sections on the bus and so on. It was not uncommon at all for a restaurant to have a dinning area for whites, and a window at the back where black people could buy prepared food wrapped up in wax paper and put in a brown bag.

I use to wonder why we were willing to eat in a place where only white people could sit, but we were eating food prepared by blacks working back in the kitchen. We could eat food they prepared, but we couldn't eat a table near a black person? This was odd to me.

I am going to vote today, early voting, and I will be voting for Barack Obama, the first black man to run for this lofty office. The act of voting caused me to remember that little paper flag and the poll tax used to discourage blacks from voting.

The poll tax was not eliminated until three-fourths of states had ratified the 24th Amendment to the US Constitution. At the ceremony in 1964 formalizing the 24th Amendment, the President said:

There can be no one too poor to vote. ~ President Lyndon Johnson

This 2008 Presidential election is all the more remarkable when you realize that Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1964, and the poll tax preventing or discouraging blacks from voting was not made illegal until February 4, 1964. The poll tax was still in effect after Barack Obama was born. When you realize this, you can see how far this country has come.
But we have not come far enough.

While the poll tax was made illegal, this has not stopped efforts to discourage voters. A recent debate has arisen over states that require voters to show a driver's license or a state identification card. The rationale is that requiring a picture ID would prevent voter fraud. Everyone should support stopping voter fraud, but this State ID requirement is a disguised form of the poll tax. You see, there is a fee required to get a driver's license, and most states require a fee for the State ID cards as well. I have no problem with the fee for a State ID because the materials, the photo equipment, and the labor all cost money, so, yes, it makes since that a reasonable fee be charged for those cards, but this fee stops being reasonable when you have to have one of these two things in order to vote. If you require a State ID cards or a Driver's licenses you are requiring people to pay a fee in order to vote. To avoid being accused of voter suppression two states, Georgia and Indiana, offering free identification cards free to those who can demonstrate the need. This helps, of course, but I remain opposed to such requirements for the following reasons:

1. Traveling to a government office can be prohibitive for the homeless and the poorest of society. These voter requirements mean that a person has to have the time, and the transportation to go to a state office somewhere, stand in line, and get the ID. You have to have to be able to get to an office during normal office hours, which is hard for low income people to do, and you have to have transportation, which is also hard for low income and elderly and handicapped people to manage.

2. Even if the ID is free, it is only free if you demonstrate need, meaning that you have to go through the humiliating hoops of proving you are poor.

Should people have to pay fees and have transportation, and get time off work without loss of wages, or loss of the job in order to vote? Shouldn't people be able to vote without revealing to a stranger that they are down on their luck, or poor?

The poor are not being prevented from voting by these ID requirements, but they are being discouraged from voting by the fees of the ID and the hassle hoops they have to jump through to obtain those IDs.

As a Child Welfare case manager I find myself working with families where abuse and neglect are suspected. I have had to visit many homeless mothers and their children at Salvation Army shelters. Not too long ago I ran into an old black man hanging around the Salvation Army shelter. He was not eligible to get a bed there, but he was able to get a meal there once a day. This elderly homeless black man asked me for money and then noticed I was wearing an Obama baseball cap.

"You fur Obama?"

"Yes, sir, I am."
"Why you, a white man, fur Obama? You tell me why you, a white man, would be fur Obama."

I explained first that I was a Democrat and I was going to support the Democratic candidate no matter who that was, but that I was excited by Obama specifically. I said that I thought he was smart, that he was going to work for regular Americans and not just for rich people, and I thought it would be great if little black children could see a black man in the highest office in this country. It would show them that there are no limits on what you can do if you work hard, and have courage and determination.

This old man put his hands to his face to cover his tears. I found our conversation a little off putting. I was just talking.

"I'm gunnuh tell folk what you said, and I'm gunnuh tell dem dat a WHITE man said this."

As I left this guy I remember thinking, "I bet he won't even be allowed to vote." This homeless man, probably an alcoholic, has no address. He hasn't got money for his next bottle, or for a sandwich. He has no transportation. This old man, was lucid, sane, and the actions of government affect his daily life, but because he has no mailing address, can't afford a State ID, and has no transportation to the DMV office, he will not be allowed to vote. He has the physical ability to stand in line, to sign a ledger, but he is disenfranchised by fees, and rules and the hoops we require voters to jump through before they can cast their vote.