Because the Byrd Organization favored policies that were against the majority’s interests, it was preoccupied with manipulating the rules for voting and representation. Among its tried-and-true tools was a poll tax that effectively kept most whites as well as nearly all blacks away at election time. The black electorate had plummeted to one-seventh of its earlier strength after the 1902 constitutional provisions aimed at it, but the provisions took out others, too.
