Black History Month- The Florida Poll Tax 1889-1938

At the end of the Civil War, African Americans made up nearly half of the population of Florida. Blacks in Florida before the Civil War were enslaved people did not have the right to vote. The passage of the 15^th Amendment to the US Constitution in 1870  was supposed to extendthe right to vote to all citizens regardless of race color or previous condition of servitude. But other methods of voter suppression such as poll taxes and literacy tests, were used to get around the wording of the Amendment and effectively disenfranchise African Americans in the election process.  Florida was the first ex-Confederate state to use the Poll Tax as an effective barrier to prevent blacks from voting. And we are seeing new attempts to suppress the minority vote to this day.

White lawmakers in Florida had a strategic reason to fear newly empowered African American voters at the end of the Civil War. Blacks made up about 45% of Florida’s population and thousands of white residents had lost their right to vote because of their connection to the Confederacy.  By 1867, there were 15,434 black voters registered in Florida and just 11,148 who were white. Nineteen blacks were elected to the 76-member Florida Legislature in 1870. During this election, Josiah Walls, a former slave and Union soldier became Florida’s first black member of Congress. Walls would be the only black member of Congress from Florida for the next 116 years.

In 1889, Florida’s Legislature adopted a $2 annual poll tax as a requirement for voting.  Both whites and blacks had to pay it. In reality, the legislators knew that the $2 tax would affect blacks more because they were overwhelmingly poor. Political candidates, for example, often paid the cost to entice white voters to support them. Election officials frequently “overlooked” the tax for whites without legally coming into conflict with the 15th Amendment.

Florida abolished the poll tax in 1938 because so many candidates were trying to buy votes by paying the tax. In 1964, the 24th Amendment to the US Constitution was adopted abolishing the poll tax in federal elections. It would take the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, however, before the majority of African Americans in Florida could register to vote.