White primaries

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

White primaries (English for "White primaries") were primaries , which in the southern states of the USA ban took place and the non-white voters and candidates to participate. Between 1890 and 1944, this practice de facto prevented blacks from exercising their active and passive voting rights. The United States Supreme Court held this practice constitutional for decades and did not change its mind until 1944.

Establishment and importance of the white primaries

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, almost all political offices in the southern states were held by representatives of the Democratic Party . At that time the Republicans were even more progressive than the Democrats, who stood for reactionary and racist politics (it was not until the 20th century that the political orientation reversed, on the one hand with Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal policy and on the other with Lyndon B. Johnson , who showed solidarity with the African American civil rights movement ). The Republican Party played such an unimportant role in the southern states, or rather the Democratic Party was so dominant, that the voting decision was de facto already made by the primaries of this party, the subsequent final election campaign was then only a matter of form. Exclusion from the primaries was therefore equivalent to exclusion from the entire election process.

The parliaments of the southern states passed laws defining political parties as "private" organizations. The Democratic Party was no longer a political organization, but a purely private one, which was no longer affected by the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution and excluded African Americans from their primaries. Only after the Supreme Court, in its decision of April 3, 1944 ( Smith v. Allwright ) (321 US 649) , had classified the regulation of the "White Primaries" as clearly unconstitutional, since due to the weight / importance of the primaries, Even these pre-elections would have to be seen as an integral part of the (entire) election process and for this reason black Americans should not be excluded from this if it was only possible for African Americans to participate in elections.

Legal disputes

The American Civil Liberties Union had already sued the white primaries in the 1920s. The 1944 Supreme Court decision took Texas law prohibiting blacks from voting as the basis of its decision.

According to Smith v. Allwright

After the decision of Smith v. Allwright enrolled tens of thousands of African Americans on electoral lists. However, authorities and legislators found other ways of discrimination: the amount of taxes paid or tests of literacy were used as an exclusion criterion to keep blacks from exercising the right to vote.

literature

  • Alilunas, Leo. "Legal Restrictions on the Negro in Politics: A Review of Negro Suffrage Policies Prior to 1915" The Journal of Negro History , Vol. 25, no. 2 (Apr., 1940), pp. 153-160
  • Different, Evan. "Boss Rule and Constituent Interests: South Texas Politics during the Progressive Era," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 84 (January 1981).
  • Barr, Alwyn. Reconstruction to Reform: Texas Politics, 1876-1906 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971).
  • Beth, LP "The White Primary and the Judicial Function in the United States. The Political Quarterly Vol. 29 No. 4 (October 1958), pp. 366-377.
  • GreenPrimary in Texas (Millwood, New York: KTO Press, 1979).
  • David Montejano. Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987).
  • Marshall, Thurgood. "The Rise and Collapse of the 'White Democratic Primary" The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 26, no. 3; The Negro Voter in the South (Summer, 1957), pp. 249-254.
  • Overacker, Louise. "The Negro's Struggle for Participation in Primary Elections" The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 1 (Jan. 1945), pp. 54-61.
  • Parker, Albert. "Dictatorship in the South." Fourth International, Vol.2 No.4, May 1941, pages. 115-118. (May 1941)
  • Kennedy, Stetson. Jim Crow Guide Florida Atlantic University, (Boca Raton). (March 1990) ISBN 978-0-8130-0987-2

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Grovey v. Townsend, 295 US 45 (1935)
  2. ^ Smith v. Allwright, 321 US 649 (1944)
  3. ↑ Texas Politics - Smith v. Allwright (1944) - White Primaries
  4. ↑ http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/marshall/whiteprimary.html