Second, the tax was cumulative, a feature that alone would prove virtually insurmountable. For every year the resident was eligible to vote, a payment was due. For example, if after twenty years of not voting or having been unable to vote, an African American in Alabama in 1944 was finally able to pay, he or she would need not $1.50 to do so but rather $30, which is the equivalent of $722 in 2016.37 By design, then, those back taxes “effectively depressed the black turnout.”
