text: This compared to more than 181,000 African Americans eligible to vote in 1900.The numbers dropped even more in later decades.The state legislature passed additional racial segregation laws related to public facilities into the 1950s: jails were segregated in 1911; hospitals in 1915; toilets, hotels, and restaurants in 1928; and bus stop waiting rooms in 1945.While the planter class had persuaded poor whites to vote for this legislative effort to suppress black voting, the new restrictions resulted in their disenfranchisement as well, due mostly to the imposition of a cumulative poll tax.By 1941, whites constituted a slight majority of those disenfranchised by these laws: 600,000 whites vs.520,000 African Americans.Nearly all Blacks had lost the ability to vote.Despite numerous legal challenges which succeeded in overturning certain provisions, the state legislature would create new ones to maintain disenfranchisement.The exclusion of blacks from the political system persisted until after passage of federal civil rights legislation in 1965 to enforce their constitutional rights as citizens.The rural-dominated Alabama legislature consistently underfunded schools and services for the disenfranchised African Americans, but it did not relieve them of paying taxes.Partially as a response to chronic underfunding of education for African Americans in the South, the Rosenwald Fund began funding the construction of what came to be known as Rosenwald Schools.In Alabama, these schools were designed, and the construction partially financed with Rosenwald funds, which paid one-third of the construction costs.The fund required the local community and state to raise matching funds to pay the rest.Black residents effectively taxed themselves twice, by raising additional monies to supply matching funds for such schools, which were built in many rural areas.They often donated land and labor as well.