White Primary

White Primary The Fifteenth Amendment prohibited racial discrimination in voting, but in United States v. Reese (1876) the Supreme Court severely limited Congress's enforcement power, holding that the “Fifteenth Amendment does not confer the right of suffrage upon any one” (p. 217). After this, states used various methods, including literacy tests and poll taxes, to disfranchise blacks. However, these methods also prevented many whites from voting.

In 1923 Texas prohibited blacks from voting in the Democratic primary, effectively barring blacks from political participation in local and state elections in what was then a one‐party state. In Nixon v. Herndon (1927), a unanimous Supreme Court found this law violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Texas legislature responded with a new law giving political party officials the power to set their own rules in primary elections. The executive committee of the Texas Democratic party immediately prohibited black participation in its primaries. In Nixon v. Condon (1932), the Court ruled, 5 to 4, that the party's executive committee was in effect a creation of the state legislature and therefore that the prohibition of black voters amounted to unconstitutional state action. The Texas Democratic party then called a state convention and on its own passed a resolution limiting participation in Democratic primaries to “white citizens.” In Grovey v. Townsend (1935), the Court unanimously upheld this version of the white primary. However, in Smith v. Allwright (1944), a Court made up almost entirely of new justices ruled, 8 to 1, that white primaries violated the Fifteenth Amendment.

See also Vote, Right to.

Paul Finkelman