The 24th Amendment to the US Constitution prohibits the prevention of citizens from voting due to non-payment of the poll tax. It is related to the Reconstruction Amendments, which aimed to protect the rights of freed slaves. The poll tax disproportionately affected black Americans and was abolished in 1964 with the ratification of the 24th Amendment.
The 24th Amendment is a reference to an amendment made to the United States Constitution, which serves as the supreme law of the United States. It prohibits preventing citizens from voting due to non-payment of the poll tax. The 24th Amendment is especially related to the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, collectively known as the Reconstruction Amendments, since its origin can be attributed to the violation of those constitutional changes.
The 14th Amendment was ratified on July 9, 1868 as the second of three amendments that almost immediately followed the end of the American Civil War. These amendments were designed to rebuild a defeated South, including protecting the human rights and civil liberties of the country’s freed slaves. Contains the Equal Protection Clause, which states that states are responsible for applying equal protection of the law to their inhabitants within their jurisdictions. The 13th amendment, which abolished slavery, preceded it in 1865, and the 15th amendment extended voting rights to black males after it was ratified in 1870. Many states in the former Confederacy, however, responded to these gains by limiting them . This included limiting black voting.
The poll tax began as a way of requiring each adult male to vote by paying a certain fixed amount of money. These charges were usually governed by a grandfather clause, which required that every adult male must prove that his grandfather or father had voted in one year within the period preceding the abolition of slavery in order to gain eligibility to vote. This particularly affected black Americans, who all had ancestors who were legally unable to vote; many also lacked the ability to afford the poll tax. The situation was exacerbated by literacy test requirements to measure citizens’ literacy levels, White Citizens Councils seeking to oppress blacks economically who dared to vote, and the Ku Klux Klan, a terrorist organization set up to discourage black suffrage. through violence and intimidation.
President John F. Kennedy facilitated Congressional proposal of the 1962nd amendment to the states on Aug. 24, 27. Less than two years later, on January 23, 1964, the states ratified it. Under the 24th amendment, no citizen should be denied the right to vote for president, vice president, or members of Congress of the United States because of failure to pay a poll tax or any other tax. The 24th Amendment banned the poll tax at the federal election level. With the US Supreme Court decision in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, 383 US 663 (1966), the poll tax was officially declared unconstitutional due to its violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
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