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2024-11-13
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This dissertation tells the story of the rise of the White man’s political and social movement and the Texas White primary election system they created during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The genesis of the White man’s movement was the desire of Southern White men to reclaim their political supremacy in Texas and throughout the South. The associations sought to circumvent the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, which guaranteed equal legal treatment, citizenship, and voting rights for the freedmen. Like the rest of the South, Texas devised multiple layers of obstacles to disfranchise the freedmen but differed from the other Confederate states due to the highly decentralized nature of its election system.
Using White supremacy to rally White voters, the White man’s associations initially targeted counties and towns of the state’s “Black Belt,” where Black voters outnumbered native-born Whites. The associations employed violence, fraud, and physical and economic intimidation to remove Black politicians and their allies from elected offices. Once White rule was restored, the associations leveraged White primary elections to secure, retain, and perpetuate their dominance.
The White man’s movement began slowly in the late 1870s and was initially constrained by federal authorities. During the 1880s, rising violence against African American political involvement and the waning interest and oversight from national Republicans and the courts buoyed supporters. From late 1889 to 1892, the associations reclaimed many of Texas’s Black majority counties and a few towns. The movement paused briefly as Populism threatened Democratic Party rule, but after the 1896 elections, when Populism was soundly defeated, the movement resumed with even more vigor. This time, White primary elections proved popular even in White majority counties and towns. Former Populists returning to the Texas Democratic Party bitterly blamed Black voters for the failure of the People’s Party demanding White supremacy and the legal disfranchisement of voters of color. During the early 1900s, White primary elections spread throughout the state, and by 1906, White primary elections had become a state-sanctioned institution.
Texas’s White man’s associations were much more than clubs for local White men interested in politics. The associations and their White primary elections achieved that and more as they extended their influence beyond politics and into a local communities' social and economic fabric. Membership in the associations could benefit the business and social prospects of ambitious young men on the make. The associations became county and city political machines controlled by local elites. The county bosses restored and enhanced their power, wealth, and social standing that had been challenged by the South’s defeat in the Civil War. The leaders created highly authoritarian structures that gave these men enormous power, which they used to promote elite-oriented political, social, and economic policies locally and throughout the state.
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