Darryl PaulsonSecond of six parts.
In the first part of this series, I wrote that the 15th Amendment said that Southern states could not deny the right to vote based on race, but that they used a variety of tactics to keep blacks from voting anyway.
One of the major barriers to black voting in Florida was the white primary, which said that only whites could vote in the primary election. This seems like a clear violation of the 15th Amendment.
It did not violate the Federal Constitution, according to the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1921 case of Newberry v. U.S. This case involved a contested Michigan primary election in which the Court held that Congress could not regulate primary elections.
The South saw its opportunity. If the federal government could not regulate primaries, then Southern states could limit who participated in those elections. In the one-party South, whoever won the primary won the general election. Florida’s white primary dates back to 1892 when the Democratic Party banned blacks from voting in its elections to preserve the “purity and integrity of the party.”
Beginning in 1927, the NAACP began its assault on the white primary laws. In Nixon v. Herndon, a unanimous Supreme Court struck down the Texas white primary as a clear violation of the 14th Amendment’s “equal protection” clause since state discrimination was involved. Texas slightly altered the law, but the Court again found it violated the 14th Amendment in the 1932 case of Nixon v. Condon.
Texas altered the law again. This “legislate and litigate” strategy was an essential part of the Southern strategy to deny and delay blacks the right to vote.
On April Fool’s Day in 1935, the Supreme Court upheld the Texas white primary.
Finally, in the 1944 case of Smith v. Allwright, the Court declared the white primary was unconstitutional and a violation of the 15th Amendment. South Carolina sought to evade the Court’s decision by repealing all laws relating to elections so that the Court could not find any state discrimination. Florida considered doing the same, but the Supreme Court ended these political shenanigans.
In 1945 the Florida Supreme Court declared that the state’s white primary was unconstitutional in Davis v. Cromwell. In response to the Court’s decision, the city of Jacksonville switched from ward to at-large elections to prevent the election of blacks in the majority black districts.
When a black minister in Jacksonville attempted to register and vote in 1944, he was told, “You won’t go to jail, but you will be killed! This is Florida. We don’t allow niggers to vote here in Democratic primaries.”
The repeal of the white primary provided the first tangible increase in black voter registration in Florida. “Florida citizens now face a bright future,” wrote Harry Moore, head of the Florida NAACP and the Progressive Voters’ League.
In 1940, only 3 to 6 percent of blacks in Florida were registered to vote. By 1947, the number increased to 13 to 16 percent.
Part III: The Florida poll tax.
