He did not know that Long was preparing to challenge Franklin Roosevelt’s bid for re-election by running against him for the presidency; that he was no longer campaigning merely in the Deep South where Negroes, disfranchised ever since the final rout of carpetbaggery in the 1870s, were kept from the polls first by force, then by the Grandfather Clause, and after that by the Understanding Clause, but above all by the one-party device of settling campaigns not at a general election but in a Democratic (i.e., white) primary. Running for office as the nominee of what in all likelihood would have been a new coalition party--the Share-Our-Wealthers?--Louisiana’s Kingfish would need all the minority-group votes he could attract to his standard. Primarily this meant the heavy Negro vote of Harlem in New York, Chicago’s black-and-tan belt, and other such concentrations in Boston, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Detroit, Cincinnati, and so on. Looking forward, planning far ahead, he had already begun to rid himself of the “racist” label customarily applied to every far-Southern politician. As an initial step he abolished the poll tax in Louisiana, issuing poll certificates free to all applicants, regardless of color, provided they could meet the age and residential requirements. True, this was quite meaningless insofar as enfranchising the Louisiana Negroes went. The law provided that no one would be permitted to register or to vote unless he could show poll-tax receipts (or later, free poll certificates) for each of the two years directly preceding any given election. Its intent was primarily to keep floaters from being brought into the state from Mississippi or other adjacent areas, on election day. But this was by no means the only prerequisite for voting. One must also be registered, each parish registrar being the sole arbiter as to whether the applicant had correctly interpreted a section of the state or federal constitutions. In theory the Democratic Party was a private organization, like the Fifth Ward Athletic Guild, and could thus choose its members at pleasure, excluding whom it wished not to admit. Coupled with this was an unwritten agreement to settle political differences not between parties, but between factions of the Democratic Party, with all hands pledged to support the Democratic nominee in the ensuing general election, even if that nominee “happens to be a yellow dog!” Abolition of the poll tax did nothing to alter this situation, which obtained until the Supreme Court invalidated it, many years after Long’s death. None the less, Negroes queued up by the thousands and treasured the essentially worthless but to them invaluable slips of paper officially issued to them.