The Poll Tax Repealer newsletter: 1943-46

The Poll Tax Repealer was the national newsletter of the National Committee to Abolish the Poll Tax (founded in 1941 and disbanded in 1948).

 

The image is the front page of the August 1946 issue. Available issues date from 1943-46.

 

Poll taxes (a tax levied when voting in an election) were imposed in many U.S. Southern states as one of several methods to minimize African American voters. Laws typically excluded from the tax anyone whose father and/or grandfather, had voted prior to the Civil War—assuring that nearly all African Americans were subject to the tax and most white Southerners were not.

 

The Committee pulled together a broad coalition of liberals, civil rights organizations and left wing groups like the Socialist Party and Communist Party.. The campaign had some success at the local level as some states repealed their poll tax, including Georgia in 1945.

 

Local resident Virginia Foster Durr headed the National Committee to Abolish the Poll Tax in the mid and late 1940s.

She also ran for governor of Virginia on the Progressive Party ticket in 1948. Her husband Clifford defended government workers charged with violating the U.S. ban on communists employed by the federal system. They were viciously red-baited, but after re-locating to Birmingham, assisted Rosa Parks and the bus boycott in Montgomery, Al. 1955-56.

 

The civil rights movement wasn’t successful at ending the tax until the 24thAmendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1964. Poll taxes in state elections were outlawed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1966

 

For PDFs of available issues, see:

 

Vol. 2 No. 2 – March 1943: washingtonspark.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/poll-tax-repe...

Vol. 4 No. 1 – April 1945 washingtonspark.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/vol-4-no-1-po...

Vol. 4 No. 3 – May 4, 1945 washingtonspark.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/vol-4-no-3.pdf

Vol. 4 No. 5 – June 1, 1945 washingtonspark.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/vol-4-no-5.pdf

Vol. 4 No. 6 – June 15, 1945 washingtonspark.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/vol-4-no-6-ju...

Vol. 4 No. 6 – First July issue, 1945 washingtonspark.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/vol-4-no-6-fi...

Vol. 4 No. 9 – Second August issue, 1945 washingtonspark.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/vol-4-no-9.pdf

Vol. 4 No. 11 – Second September issue, 1945 washingtonspark.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/vol-4-no-11.pdf

Vol. 4 No 12 – First October issue, 1945 washingtonspark.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/vol-4-no-12.pdf

Vol. 4 No 14 – First November Issue, 1945 washingtonspark.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/vol-4-no-14.pdf

Vol. 4 No. 15 – Second November issue, 1945 washingtonspark.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/vol-4-no-15.pdf

Vol. 4 No. 16 – December, 1945 washingtonspark.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/vol-4-no-16.pdf

Vol. 5 (No number) – August, 1946 washingtonspark.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/vol-5-aug-194...

 

For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHsk6v7Jqh

 

The copies of the Poll Tax Repealer are from MS Fight for Racial Justice and the Civil Rights Congress: Papers of the Civil Rights Congress. New York Public Library. Archives Unbound,

 

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