Using Progressivism For Voter Suppression: The All-White Primary (September 1, 2026)
by Scott Sosebee
When the end of the Civil War brought the end of slavery the question in the nation immediately turned to the status of the former slaves. Would they be granted full citizenship, or would it be a gradual process? If not full citizenship, would they be able to vote, hold office, serve on juries, or enter into contracts? Reconstruction—particularly after congressional takeover of that process—answered that question: “freedmen” would be immediately granted citizenship with the full rights thereof. Such a development did not sit well with most southerners because citizenship rights made it much more difficult to maintain that region’s bi-racial social order based on the concept of White superiority. Thus, southern legislatures and leaders sought to abridge those rights, and the right to vote witnessed the most direct assaults.
Reconstruction in the South officially ended in 1877, although the federal government had removed most restrictions upon the South years earlier. With federal authority removed the southern states immediately began to impinge upon and outright remove civil rights protections for the freedmen. Through the early 1900s, southern states and municipalities began to restrict—through lawful and extra-legal means—the right to assembly, economic freedom and movement, and social self-determination. Such actions eventually resulted in the passage of Jim Crow laws in the 1890s and 1900s. The most egregious of these restrictions and barriers came in the form of voting rights through such means as “Grandfather Clauses,” literacy tests, and the pervasive Poll Tax. But the most effective—and maleficent—of voting barriers came with the advent of Progressivism and was done in the name of “electoral reform” with the advent of the “All-White Primary,” an “innovation” born in Texas.
The Populist Revolt in Texas frightened the establishment Democratic Party in Texas, not because it was ultimately successful—proactive actions by James S. Hogg and conciliation on a number of issues kept the Populists from seizing control of the state government in the 1890s—but rather its potential for success. Populism, a largely agrarian revolt, appealed to the small farmer’s lack of political, social, and economic power, a voice in state affairs that the wealthier land owners, cotton brokers, urban financiers, and particularly railroad concerns possessed at their expense. Put simply, it represented a potential division along class lines. Such a division clashed with the traditional southern and Texas approach of uniting Whites across class lines with an appeal to racial solidarity. Thus, if Populism—or any other form of class-based partisanship—gained power it would shatter the elite’s hold on the political and social levers of control, which rested on the concept of White superiority. Establishment Democrats could not allow that to happen.
Their solution had to be a way to suppress Black votes, and they found such a mechanism in the late 19th century and early twentieth century movement for progressive reform. Progressivism was many things to many people, but at its core it was a search for order in the midst of a chaotic era, as well as a movement to take power from the hands of an elite, largely wealth driven, element that seemed to dominate politics and influence in American society. One of many mechanisms that Progressives advocated to lessen such influence was the direct primary to select party nominees for state and national offices. Tradition and practice at the time was for conventions and small caucuses to select candidates for office. Those entities were mostly controlled by the elite elements, which allowed them to control virtually every lever of power. A direct primary would wrest the controls of power from those elements. Thus, in 1903, the Texas legislature passed the first of a series of laws that became known as the Terrell Election Laws, named after their sponsor and author Representative Alexander Terrell. These laws would reform Texas’ elections, and the most important was the establishment of a direct primary to choose candidates for office.
Terrell pushed for his legislation under the guise of ending fraud and opening democracy, which it certainly would, although only for Whites. Local party leaders began to enact rules that excluded African Americans from voting in primaries. Such rules skirted the 15th Amendment because it did not bar Blacks from voting in the general election, but the result was virtual disfranchisement. Texas was a one-party Democratic state, and thus the Democratic Party primaries were the elections that decided who would fill offices. Because Democrats did not allow African Texans to vote in their primaries, they had no political voice. In some parts of Texas, political and economic elites used the same sort of rules to exclude Mexican Americans from exercising the franchise. The result was an all-White primary, and it became the norm throughout the South.
Civil rights advocates continually challenged Texas’ law in the courts and, for the most part, it held up, but courts had weakened its application. The Supreme Court, in a 1921 case unrelated to primaries, signaled a willingness to allow political parties to function as private bodies. Texas lawmakers in 1923 first passed a state law that explicitly barred Blacks from voting in primaries, but in 1924 black El Paso medical doctor Lawrence Nixon successfully challenged the law as violating his rights under the “equal protection” clause of the 14th Amendment. To the lawmakers surprise, in 1927 the U.S. Supreme Court declared Texas’ law unconstitutional.
The Nixon case did not end Texas’ attempts to exclude African Americans from the primary process. The legislature, taking a cue from the Supremes earlier ruling, responded with a law that essentially made political parties private organizations. As such they could decide who could be a member of their organization and thus participate in its affairs. The Democratic Party in Texas then passed a rule that excluded African Americans from being members of the party, and then ruled that only party members may vote in primaries. Once again, Texas had an all-White primary, one that would remain in place until the U.S. Supreme Court once again made a ruling in 1944, in Smith v. Allwright, that such a system was unconstitutional.
The East Texas Historical Association provides this column as a public service. Scott Sosebee the Executive Director of the Association and can be contacted at sosebeem@sfasu.edu or via www.easttexashistorical.org.