Word: polle
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...right to vote, President Roosevelt last week grew highly sarcastic in press conference. The "ladies' proposal," he snorted, was about as democratic as it would be to limit voters to male holders of B.A. degrees. While he was on the subject he went on also to denounce poll taxes as a relic of the Revolutionary era. (He recently endorsed a movement to repeal the poll tax in Arkansas...
Knowing well that the poll tax is the chief device whereby Southern Democrats prevent Negroes from voting, the wariest politician in the U.S. quickly added that in condemning the poll tax he was not talking about Negroes. They, he said, were a problem to be handled separately. At this remark, political ears pricked. It was the first time Mr. Roosevelt had publicly mentioned one of the most delicate aspects of his new Liberal party. Virginia's Senator Carter Glass declared that Franklin Roosevelt had exhibited "an absolutely superficial knowledge of the matter...
...South Carolina no one can vote in general elections without a poll tax receipt, but any white man can enter a primary by putting his name down in a book (often kept in a grocery store). This year some 20,000 Negroes were allowed to put their names down, a piece of official colorblindness far more advantageous to New Dealer Johnston than to unreconstructed "Cotton Ed" Smith...
...Oklahoma, where there is no poll tax, 60,000 of the State's 225,000-odd Negroes registered this year, an all-time high. Of these, 45,000 signed up as Democrats. When Franklin Roosevelt appeared in Oklahoma City in behalf of his friend Senator Elmer Thomas, Negroes were allotted 300 seats in the grandstand. Mr. Thomas' Negro campaign managers claimed their man got 90% of the Negro vote...
...Southern Democratic chieftains are above voting Negroes when the fighting gets hot, as white-crested Ed Crump has voted them for years in Memphis. Moreover, the poll tax means less to Southern Negroes since their economic status is being raised by Relief and farm subsidy funds. When their economic and social position is further bulwarked by the Wage-Hour law and C.I.O.'s bicolor unionization, the days of lily-white politics in the South may be numbered...