Friday, December 10, 2010

Twenty-Fourth Amendment - No restrictions to votes

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.

This is essentially the meat and potatoes of the Civil Rights Act of the 60's.  Several of the southern states were still charging poll taxes to African Americans for the purposes of voting in elections.  The twenty-fourth amendment abolished all forms of taxes and other forms of payment to vote.  Although this was something that the southern states implemented after giving African Americans the right to vote it effectively deterred people from voting until now.

Poll Tax Receipt 1895??  Why pay $2.50 to vote?
 Here we can see a receipt for poll taxes paid in the year 1895 in the amount of $2.50!! Although the section after the name is not filled out you can imagine that the person assessed was colored since this is from Birmingham, AL. one of the several Southern States to have a poll tax at the time.  This amount of money was phenomenal for the time, let alone to pay for voting rights.

 Crazy History Video by a couple of Kids!

 

Although really crude and in some instances rather pointless this is about how the 24th amendment played out!  The kids in the video are hilarious in the aspect of using the 1930's mask for the African American and the fact that homeless shelters are the voting issue of the candidates.  This might be a racist plug, but the stupidity of the rest of the video hides it, unless your really looking.

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