On February 4, 1964, the federal government put an end to one of the nation's more shameful bits of legislation by authorizing the Twenty-fourth Amendment, which effectively outlawed the poll tax. The tax stemmed back to the 1880s, when members of the burgeoning Populist party began to build a potentially potent coalition of African American and lower class white voters in the South. Across the region, planters, merchants, and industrialists moved to preserve their power and pushed for the passage of a deliberately prohibitive poll tax. The legislation, adopted by a host of Southern states, proved all too effective, as scores of African-Americans, as well as the "poorer sort" of whites, simply could not afford to pay the tax and thus lost the right to vote. However, thanks in large part to the efforts of Senator Spessard L. Holland of Florida, the once recalcitrant Congress slowly came around to the cause of outlawing the tax and passed the Twenty-fourth Amendment. On January 23, 1964, the amended was ratified by the South Dakota legislature, giving it the three-fourth majority necessary to make it the law of the land.