Tony Torres, who grew up in the 1950s, remembers seeing his parents scramble to gather money, simply to pay a poll tax to vote.

“My parents raised a family of eight, and it was not easy making a decision to pay the tax,” Torres said. “I would hear my parents discussing if they could afford to pay the poll tax vs. buying groceries.”

Torres, a resident of Kingsville, wondered about the history behind the tax in Texas and its effect on voting. Curious Texas, an ongoing project from The Dallas Morning News that invites readers to join in our reporting process, has the answers.

Poll taxes in America, particularly in Southern states, date to the Reconstruction era of the mid-19th century.

The Texas Constitution of 1869 and 1876 allowed the Legislature to impose an annual “poll tax” of $1 on all men between the ages of 21 and 60. The poll tax was used to fund free public schools and was not a prerequisite for voting.

Walter Buenger, a Texas history professor at The University of Texas at Austin and chief historian at the Texas State Historical Association, said at the time, the term “poll tax” wasn’t directed at voting.

The Legislature amended the Constitution in 1902, subjecting anyone who wanted to vote to an annual poll tax of $1.50 to $1.75.

“The poll tax was high enough to discourage people from voting, particularly African-Americans, Tejanos and poor whites,” Buenger said. “Some evidence shows the poll tax was a reaction to the populist movement of the 1890s, which drew support of African-Americans.”

The rationale politicians used for implementing a poll tax was to regulate elections, prevent voter fraud and ensure a better class of voters, he said. Voters had to pay the tax before voting and bring the receipt to the ballots as proof.

Before the poll tax, voting in Texas was very simple, Buenger said. You didn’t even have to be a citizen to vote until 1902.

Other methods of keeping certain groups from voting included "white primaries," legislation passed in 1923 that prohibited blacks from voting in Democratic primaries — the dominant party at the time.

Blacks and Latinos also faced literacy tests and terror attacks designed to keep them away from the polls. These tactics included the Ku Klux Klan burning houses and crops and beating and intimidating blacks in the late 1800s. In 1868, the Klan killed a Texas Republican leader and some of his black supporters.

When Congress passed the 24th Amendment in 1964 to prohibit poll taxes for federal elections, only Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi and Virginia still had them.

The Texas Senate attempted to repeal the poll tax in 1949 and 1963 but failed both times. The state ended poll taxes for local and state elections with a 1966 resolution, but it didn't formally approve the amendment until 2009, when Rep. Alma Allen, a black Democrat from Houston, sponsored a resolution to ratify it.

Though the era of paying to vote in Texas ended, Buenger said the tax has had a lasting effect on turnout. Nearly 80 percent of the total voting age population — mostly white men — voted in 1896, according to the Texas Almanac, compared to the 46 percent who voted in the 2016 presidential election.

“Voter participation went down after 1902 and has stayed down ever since,” he said. “We’ve never reached the percentage of voters who voted in the 1890s in Texas.”

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