Poll Tax Payment Certificate from the state of Alabama

Along with literacy tests, property or residency requirements, poll taxes were one of the methods used to prevent African Americans from voting beginning in the last quarter of the 19th century. After the Fifteenth Amendment enabled the right to vote to African Americans a number of states enacted poll tax laws as a legal method to restrict voting rights. The poll tax was especially effective in disenfranchising potential black voters since African Americans made up a disproportionate number of the poor who could not afford to pay.