On suffrage centennial, Black women are fighting a modern day ‘poll tax’

Blair Bowie, who manages the Campaign Legal Center’s Restore Your Vote Campaign, warned Floridians at the end of 2018 that unless their secretary of state committed to an education and outreach campaign following Amendment 4, the state could fall into Alabama’s same failings to restore voting rights. The Campaign Legal Center filed Thompson v. Alabama on behalf of Treva Thompson, a 51-year-old Black woman from Huntsville, Ala., who completed her parole and probation in 2015 and applied to register to vote. Although she meets the requirement to vote due to the redefinition of moral turpitude crimes, she cannot vote because the court system says she owes $40,000 in debts she can’t afford. 

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