November 25, 2024
Profound Achievements Would be Short-lived
The expansion of rights won during Reconstruction was met with swift rejection by white Southerners, resulting in widespread voter suppression and violence against people who were formerly enslaved. Poll taxes and other methods of disenfranchisement lasted for decades.
Evelyn Butts, a civil rights activist and politician from Norfolk, challenged the poll tax and took her case before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1966. The case became part of Harper v. Virginia State Board of Election, which declared poll taxes unconstitutional in Virginia.
