Lesson 166:
Evelyn Thomas Butts
An ongoing illustrative history study
This piece originally posted on 11/24/2024
Today we look at the pivotal role played by Evelyn Thomas Butts: activist, agitator, and (eventually) elected official. Born in 1924 Norfolk, Virginia, Evelyn Thomas was orphaned at a young age and raised mostly by her politically-conscious aunt. Evelyn eventually married a Charles Herbert Butts, who served in WWII but was injured. To offset his disability (no wartime benefits for Black veterans, remember), the couple --and their eventual three daughters-- took in boarders, and Evelyn also worked as a seamstress. Inspired by her aunt's careful teaching about staying closely involved in local politics, Evelyn became a member of the Oakwood (Norfolk) neighborhood civic league and eventually was elevated to its president. She used this platform to speak out against segregated schools, segregated stadium seating at sporting events, and even organized a picketing of a local supermarket that refused to hire Black employees. She also co-founded the Rosemont Middle School during this period, and organized voting drives.
It was in the light of her voting drive efforts, that the largest elephant in the room at the time was clearly the Poll Tax --a significant (and insulting) barrier to voting rights; not just in Virginia, but in most of the South. Poll taxes, while technically having been in existence in varying forms since Colonial days, had in post-Reconstruction times, evolved into blatant discriminatory fees. While on paper these required payments made no mention of race or other category, in practice they were broadly designed to disenfranchise poor and working class voters, but most specifically the Black population. Added administrative "fine print" (such as vaguely-worded requirements to pay the fee on a different, specified date prior to an election and then being required to bring that receipt to the polling place), as well as weasel-worded grandfather clauses and impossibly difficult literacy exams, all conspired to ensure that few Blacks would be able to cast ballots.
In November of 1963, Butts filed suit in the Eastern Judicial District of Virginia in an attempt to have the poll tax declared unconstitutional. This attempt was dismissed, but, undeterred, Butts joined with Annie E. Harper and several other women from Fairfax County, Virginia, to consolidate their cases together, along a broader premise. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond heard arguments in 1964 but ultimately ruled the tax constitutional. Butts and Harper and their allies promptly took their appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, represented by then-solicitor Thurgood Marshall.
On March 24, 1966, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that poll taxes were in fact unconstitutional, violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (see Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections).
Evelyn's activism didn't stop there; in 1975 she was appointed as the first black woman commissioner to the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority. She remained an active member of the NAACP well into the 1980's, and also organized Concerned Citizens of Norfolk, a local initiative designed to encourage more African-Americans to run for office. A street in Norfolk was renamed in her honor in 1995, and a historical marker was erected in 2020.
Pick up a copy of Fearless, the Evelyn Butts biography authored by Charlene Butts Ligon --her youngest daughter:
https://evelyntbutts.com/store/
Next lesson - Watch this space
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