The Poll-tax vs Colored Men
1857 Letter to the editor (William Lloyd Garrison) from Peter Lester & Mifflin Gibbs regarding the poll tax, which African American men had to pay, even though they could not vote in California.
Excerpts
During a residence of seven years in California, we, with hundreds of other colored men, have cheerfully paid city, state, and county taxes, and every other species of tax, save only the poll tax. On the day before yesterday the tax collector called on us and lugged off twenty or thirty dollars’ worth of goods, in payment, as he said, of this tax.
Now, while we cannot understand how a white man can refuse to pay each and every tax for the support of the government under which he enjoys every privilege – from the right to rob a Negro up to that of being Governor – we regard it as low and despicable to pay, situated as we are politically. However, if there is no redress, the great State of California may come around annually and rob us of twenty or thirty dollars worth of goods. We will never willingly pay three dollars as poll tax as long as we remain disfranchised, oath-denied, outlawed colored Americans. Lester & Gibbs
Questions:
Why did Lester and Gibbs write this letter? What is a poll tax?
Why did Lester and Gibbs not pay the poll tax? What happened to people who didn’t pay?
What does it mean to be “disfranchised, oath-denied and outlawed?”
What questions do you have after reading this letter?
Citations
Peter Lester & Mifflin Gibbs, letter to The Liberator, 7/3/1857, p.4