The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the federal government and each state from denying or abridging a citizen's right to vote "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." It was ratified on February 3, 1870, as the third and last of the Reconstruction Amendments.
The Twenty-fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution prohibits both Congress and the states from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax or other types of tax. The amendment was proposed by Congress to the states on August 27, 1962, and was ratified by the states on January 23, 1964.
Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649 (1944), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court with regard to voting rights and, by extension, racial desegregation. It overturned the Texas state law that authorized parties to set their internal rules, including the use of white primaries. The court ruled that it was unconstitutional for the state to delegate its authority over elections to parties in order to allow discrimination to be practiced. This ruling affected all other states where the party used the white primary rule.
Harry McLeary Wurzbach was an American attorney and politician. He was the first Republican elected to the United States House of Representatives from Texas since Reconstruction to be elected for more than two terms and was re-elected to the Sixty-eighth, Sixty-ninth, and Seventieth congresses, representing Texas's 14th congressional district for several terms, from 1921 to 1929. He was re-elected in 1930 to the Seventy-second Congress and died in office. The first Republican elected from Texas who was born in the state, he was the only Republican from Texas serving in Congress during this period.
The Reconstruction Amendments, or the Civil War Amendments, are the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments to the United States Constitution, adopted between 1865 and 1870. The amendments were a part of the implementation of the Reconstruction of the American South which occurred after the war.
White primaries were primary elections held in the Southern United States in which only white voters were permitted to participate. Statewide white primaries were established by the state Democratic Party units or by state legislatures in South Carolina (1896), Florida (1902), Mississippi and Alabama, Texas (1905), Louisiana and Arkansas (1906), and Georgia (1900). Since winning the Democratic primary in the South almost always meant winning the general election, barring black and other minority voters meant they were in essence disenfranchised. Southern states also passed laws and constitutions with provisions to raise barriers to voter registration, completing disenfranchisement from 1890 to 1908 in all states of the former Confederacy.
Disfranchisement after the Reconstruction era in the United States, especially in the Southern United States, was based on a series of laws, new constitutions, and practices in the South that were deliberately used to prevent black citizens from registering to vote and voting. These measures were enacted by the former Confederate states at the turn of the 20th century. Efforts were also made in Maryland, Kentucky, and Oklahoma. Their actions were designed to thwart the objective of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1870, which prohibited states from depriving voters of their voting rights on the basis of race. The laws were frequently written in ways to be ostensibly non-racial on paper, but were implemented in ways that selectively suppressed black voters apart from other voters.
Nixon v. Condon, 286 U.S. 73 (1932), was a voting rights case decided by the United States Supreme Court, which found the all-white Democratic Party primary in Texas unconstitutional. This was one of four cases brought to challenge the Texas all-white Democratic Party primary. All challenges were supported by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). With Smith v. Allwright (1944) the Supreme Court decisively prohibited the white primary.
Grovey v. Townsend, 295 U.S. 45 (1935), was a United States Supreme Court decision that held a reformulation of Texas's white primaries system to be constitutional. The case was the third in a series of Court decisions known as the "Texas primary cases".
Terry v. Adams, 345 U.S. 461 (1953), was a United States Supreme Court decision that held white-only pre-primary elections to be unconstitutional. It was the last in a series of court cases addressing the system of white primaries designed to disenfranchise African-American voters in the southern United States.
This is a timeline of voting rights in the United States, documenting when various groups in the country gained the right to vote or were disenfranchised.
The 1956 United States presidential election in Alabama took place on November 6, 1956, as part of the 1956 United States presidential election. Alabama voters chose eleven representatives, or electors, to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president. In Alabama, voters voted for electors individually instead of as a slate, as in the other states.
The 1952 United States presidential election in Alabama took place on November 4, 1952, as part of the 1952 United States presidential election. Alabama voters chose eleven representatives, or electors, to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president. In Alabama, voters voted for electors individually instead of as a slate, as in the other states.
King v. Chapman is a 1945 court case between Primus King, a religious leader and barber in Columbus, Georgia, and J. E. Chapman, Jr., the chair of the Muscogee County Democratic Party. It ruled the white primary as used by the Democratic Party of Georgia to be unconstitutional. This case followed the Smith v. Allwright case, which struck down the white primaries in Texas and began the downfall of white primaries in other Deep South states.
The history of black suffrage in the United States, or the right of African Americans to vote in elections, has had many advances and setbacks. Prior to the Civil War and the Reconstruction Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, some Black people in the United States had the right to vote, but this right was often abridged or taken away. After 1870, Black people were theoretically equal before the law, but in the period between the end of Reconstruction era and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 this was frequently infringed in practice.
The women's poll tax repeal movement was a movement in the United States, predominantly led by women, that attempted to secure the abolition of poll taxes as a prerequisite for voting in the Southern states. The movement began shortly after the ratification in 1920 of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which granted suffrage to women. Before obtaining the right to vote, women were not obliged to pay the tax, but shortly after the Nineteenth Amendment became law, Southern states began examining how poll tax statutes could be applied to women. For example, North and South Carolina exempted women from payment of the tax, while Georgia did not require women to pay it unless they registered to vote. In other Southern states, the tax was due cumulatively for each year someone had been eligible to vote.
The Terrell Election Law was part of a wave of election reform legislation instituting a poll tax, secret ballot, and a closed primary system in Texas from 1902 to 1907, during the Progressive Era of United States history. The 1903 law allowed parties to restrict who could vote in their primaries, paving the way to exclude African-American voters from Democratic Party primaries. A poll tax had been established in 1902 and both laws disenfranchised African Americans. The Terrell Law was named for Alexander W. Terrell. The law was revised in 1905–1906. A 1923 amendment established a complete ban on African Americans voting in any Democratic Party primaries. Lawrence Aaron Nixon sued and the law was eventually thrown out by the U.S. Supreme Court. A modified version of the law was passed by the Texas Legislature and again thrown out upon reaching the U.S. Supreme Court in a suit filed by Nixon. The decision was written by Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo.
Lawrence Aaron Nixon was a medical doctor in El Paso, Texas who twice fought state election laws barring African-Americans from voting in Democratic Party primaries in Texas all the way to the United States Supreme Court. He was never allowed to join the El Paso Medical Society because of his African-American heritage.
