Canonizing the Civil Rights Revolution: The People and the Poll Tax

Abstract

The sun is setting on the civil rights revolution. Lived experience will no longer provide the historical context with which to interpret the constitutional contributions of the fading past. Only a series of careful, historically nuanced, studies will permit the profession to thoughtfully define the constitutional canon left behind by the civil rights movement. This Article offers an authoritative exploration of the understudied, yet highly revealing, process through which Americans abolished the poll-tax. Marshalling primary sources, it reveals how the Supreme Court's opinion in Harper v. Virginia erased the significance of earlier decisions by Congress, the President and the American people to abolish the poll-tax through the enactment of the Twenty-fourth Amendment and Section Ten of the Voting Rights Act. We argue that it is time for the profession to undo the Court's erasure and to redefine the "civil rights canon," granting a central place to both the amendment and the landmark statute. Our reinterpretation of the legal achievements of the civil rights generation permits new perspectives on a wide range of issues - ranging from Katzenbach v. Morgan to Buckley v. Valeo. It also permits a fundamental critique of the Court's recent decision in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, and the constitutionality of costly voter identification requirements.

Keywords: poll tax, Twenty-fourth Amendment, Voting Rights Act, civil rights, constitutional canon, dynamic triangulation, campaign finance, voter identification