Editorial: The Negro and the vote
The Supreme Court, reversing by 8–1 a decision of nine years ago, now holds that the Democratic Party of Texas cannot bar Negroes, if otherwise qualified, from voting in primaries.
In the earlier decision, now abandoned over the lone but biting dissent of Justice Roberts, the then conservative court had ruled (in Grovey v. Townsend) that to deny a vote in a primary was a mere refusal of party membership with which “the state need have no concern.”
In other words, the Democratic Party in Texas was in the nature of a private club, able like any club to limit its membership as it saw fit.
Now the 15th Amendment (1870) states:
The right of the citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
The amendment doesn’t mention primaries. But, as everybody knows, in Texas as in other Southern states, the primary is usually the whole shooting match. The election is only a pro-forma ratification. Thus, exclusion from the primaries is actually exclusion from an effective vote.
Nevertheless, through various expedients – including the one sustained until yesterday by the Supreme Court – this exclusion has been successfully maintained.
The new ruling is a milestone in the long and arduous struggle to obtain for the Negro the civil rights accorded to him by the Constitution. He should exercise great vigilance – and temperateness – lest new expedients be devised to thwart this newly-won franchise.