Video: '24th Amendment Explained'

(Thursday, January 23, 1964, 2:25 p.m. CST) — The Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, eliminating the poll tax in federal elections, was ratified today as South Dakota became the 38th state to endorse it.

Southern states of the former Confederate States of America adopted poll taxes both in their state laws and in their state constitutions throughout the late-19th and early-20th centuries. This became possible and more widespread as the Democratic Party regained control of most levels of government in the South in the decades that followed the end of Reconstruction.

The purpose of these poll taxes was to prevent African Americans and often poor whites (and following passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, women) from voting.

Video: 'The 24th Amendment Explained: The Constitution for Dummies Series'

Use of the poll taxes by states was held to be constitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States in the 1937 decision Breedlove v. Suttles.

When the 24th Amendment was ratified in 1964, five states still retained a poll tax: Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas and Virginia. The amendment prohibited requiring a poll tax for voters in federal elections.

But it was not until 1966 that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6–3 in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections that poll taxes for any level of elections were unconstitutional. It said these violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Subsequent litigation related to potential discriminatory effects of voter registration requirements has generally been based on application of this clause.