A 91-year-old Air Force veteran from Alabama is back in the spotlight for the T-shirt she wears to the polls — one printed with an image of her 1960 poll tax exemption certificate and the words “This Is Why I Vote.” Loretta Green's story has resurfaced just as Americans head into another election, reviving a decades-old reminder of what it once cost Black voters in the South simply to cast a ballot.
Green served in the military during the Korean War, and that service is what spared her from paying Alabama's poll tax outright, according to AL.com. As a veteran, she received an exemption, but she still had to present her exemption document to election officials every time she voted — proof, she says, that showing identification at the polls is nothing new. “I didn't have to pay because I was a veteran, so this is my exemption certificate, but I had to show it,” Green told People.
For those without a military exemption, the price of voting was steep. Alabama's annual poll tax sat at $1.50, the state's 1901 constitution shows, but the real burden came from how it piled up — unpaid taxes could accumulate year over year, and missing a payment meant the bill doubled the next time around. “If you missed one year, they doubled it up on you the next year,” Green said, per the same account.
Choosing Between Eating and Voting
Green has described earning only two to three dollars while being asked to pay two to three dollars just to vote — a trade-off that, for many families, wasn't really a choice at all. “You had to choose between eating or voting,” she said. Southern states used poll taxes alongside literacy tests and intimidation to keep Black citizens from the ballot box, and the People.com report notes that, per History.com, all 11 formerly Confederate states had adopted some version of a poll tax between 1870 and 1902 as part of that broader effort to block low-income Americans from participating in democracy.
That system didn't end quickly. The 24th Amendment, ratified in 1964, barred poll taxes as a condition of voting in federal elections, and the Supreme Court struck them down for state elections two years later, in 1966. Green lived through the era the amendment was written to end, and she has carried the paperwork — and the memory — ever since.
A Message Aimed at the Next Generation
Green first drew national attention during the 2024 election cycle, when KVIA reported she was bringing her 1960 Alabama poll tax exemption certificate to voting rallies to inspire younger people to turn out. That station described her as 89 at the time. She told WVTM 13 in 2024 that wearing the certificate on her shirt was meant to push young people to exercise their rights and learn where those rights came from. “Know your history because they're not teaching it at school anymore,” she said.
Green uses her own experience to make the case directly to younger voters, urging them to learn the history behind the fight for the ballot and pass it along. She has also pushed back on the idea that voter ID requirements are new, saying there has never been a time when voters didn't have to show identification. The Alabama Secretary of State's office notes that voters must present an approved form of photo ID at the polls, and that those without one may get a free Alabama photo voter ID.
The renewed attention around Green's shirt comes as a video featuring her resurfaced shortly before Election Day. A newsletter tracking viral content, What's Resonating, reported that a Brut video featuring Green racked up 5.7 million views across two platforms and generated eight times the outlet's average TikTok likes, though the newsletter did not name which two platforms drove those numbers. For Green, the viral moment is secondary to the message stitched into the shirt itself — a reminder of what voting once cost, worn by someone who paid none of the tax but still had to prove she didn't owe it.
