White primaries were primary elections in the Southern States of the United States of America in which any non-White voter was prohibited from participating. White primaries were found in many Southern States after 1890 about until 1944. The United States Supreme Court initially held that the white primary was constitutional,[1] but only nine years later, decided that the white primary did violate the Constitution.[2] There had been no change in the text of the United States Constitution in the interim. The abrupt reversal of course by the Supreme Court led a dissenting Justice to remark that a decision like Smith v. Allwright "tends to bring adjudications of this tribunal into the same class as a restricted railroad ticket, good for this day and train only."[3]
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The use of white primaries were first used by Southern Democratic Parties in the late 19th century. Since the South was virtually a one-party system with Democrats being the dominant party, exclusion from the primaries was a de facto exclusion from the decision-making process. The white primaries were made law in many states in a "selectively inclusive" system that stated that only whites might vote in the primaries—or by legally considering the general election as the only state-held election and giving the party control of the decision-making process within the party.[4]
The American Civil Liberties Union had begun to challenge white primaries in the 1920s, but didn't get much traction until a 1923 Texas law was passed. The Texas law explicitly banned African-Americans from participating in Democratic Party primaries. This was the specific constitutional violation that the ACLU chose to base its main case upon.[5]
The ACLU challenge to the Texas law was eventually heard before the Supreme Court under the title Smith v. Allwright. The Supreme Court decided in 1944 that white primaries were unconstitutional. [6]
The ACLU success in Smith v. Allwright only specifically applied to the Texas law. However, most states ended their selectively inclusive white primaries. Tens of thousands of African-Americans registered to vote with the end of white primaries. However, many states still used many discriminatory practices, including poll taxes and literacy tests to keep African-Americans from voting.