The Durant news. (Durant, Miss.) 1882-1985, 1942-07-23
POLL Tax Reform

~AN ~
blood Unfortunately on the battlefields
in the case of the wounded, has now started
another circulati0n-building cheap adver-
Using reform campaign directed against
the poll tax states of the south. PM has late
1y been in the news when the draft number
Of its editor, Ralph Ingersoll, came up and
Mr.. Field tried to get him deferred. The
draft board thought Mr.. Ingersoll should
be willing to go since he was one of the
Ioudest advocates Of this country getting
into the war long before PPearl Harbor.
In bold front-page headlines Pm
screams How You Can Kill Poll Tax and
Win 10 Million Votes For Democracy
The writer of the article, Victor H. Bern
stein, says:
Ten million citizens Of the free and
democratic Y. s. A., which now is at war
20 project its freedom and its democracy,
wall be denied the right to vote this year
because they are poor.
This is the bitter fruit Of the poll tax
now in effect in eight Southern states--a
tax which was designed originally to main
tain the supremacy of whites over Negroes.
Out which, like most racial legislation, has
succeeded only in maintaining the suprem-
acy OF Tory politicians over both.
Among the states which thus mock
democracy are Virginia, South Carolina
and Gecrgia-all of which, with 10 other
states, revolted 166 years ago against the
unjust principle Of taxation without rep
Aesentation. The other five poll-tax states
ARE Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Tex
Is n Alabama.
you can look upon the d~isfranchised
100000 of these eight states in two
ways.
The Disfranctised
You can think of them simply as peo-
pie, as common Americans, rearing Ameri-
can children, working in fields and facto-
ries, going to church on Sundays and hang
ing wash On Mondays, paying taxes, an
swering draft calls and going to war, cele-
brating the Fourth, doing all things Ameri-
can in an American way-except the one
thing that is most American of all, going to
the polls.
Or you can think of the 10, 900, 900 not
as people, but as ballots, the bits of paper
for which, in part at least, we are fighting
this war. These 10000, 900 votes which
cannot be cast are more than enough to
have swung every presidential election in
history, more than enough to purge out of
Congress Martin Dies and IS of his col
leagues.
THE lack of a few pennies blots these
100000 votes from the democratic
strength of America.
The Enormous 81
The poll tax, in essence, is a simple
law, and in cursory reading its require
ments do not seem excessive. The tax
ranges, in the eight states, from 81 in Ar
kansas to So in Georgia and Mississippi,
payable annually a few months before cleo
ton time.
But 81 is enormous when you haven't
got it, or when your only choice is between
ballot and bread.
"The average per-capita income of the
poll-tax states is 1907 annually. But that
figure is deceptively high. 1t is a figure
based not on the earnings of the 10000
900 disfranchised, but on the earnings Of
all the people. Among the TO- 0 1000.
there are hundreds of thousands who do
not see a $40 bill from one end of the
year to another. There are more hundreds
of thousands who use no cash at all, but
who live on debts.
''To such people 81 or SO is not a tax; it
is a prohibition.
"A mathematician could show you that
in the average poll-tax Congressional dis
trict of 800, 900 residents, only $4,000 peo-
pie go to the polls, in contrast to the 100,-
900 in an average non-poll-tax district.
"He could show you that the poll tax,
though intended to curb the Negro vote
alone originally, actually prohibits more
white votes than Negro"
What Mr.. Bernstein does not know on
care about is that the 10 million poor lost
souls who are suffering because they de not
have the pitiful $500 it takes for pnlEtaA~
more than likely would not vote II tsaees had
the opportunity. For the most part they arc
people who do not know or care about who
is elected to office. Perhaps that IS the an
To the problem. If the negroes in the
south. most of whom can neither read or