Forrest County Poll Tax Receipts

Payment of a poll tax was a prerequisite to the registration for voting in a number of states until 1966. The tax emerged in some states in the late nineteenth century as part of the Jim Crow laws. After the right to vote was extended to all races by the enactment of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, several states enacted poll tax laws as a device for restricting voting rights.

Proof of payment of a poll tax was a requirement for voter registration in Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Virginia, and Texas. The poll tax requirements applied to whites as well as blacks, adversely affectting poor citizens.

The 24th Amendment, ratified in 1964, abolished the use of the poll tax (or any other tax) as a pre-condition for voting in federal elections, but made no mention of poll taxes in state elections. Mississippi's $2.00 poll tax (equal to $15.44 in 2013) was the last to fall, declared unconstitutional on 8 April 1966.