The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 95, July 1991 - April, 1992 Page: 16
598 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
years, so inadequate housing remained a serious problem. Whites also
used violence to keep blacks from occupying homes in white neighbor-
hoods. The Dallas Express reported a dozen bombings during the winter
of 1940-1941 and criticized Mayor Woodall Rodgers, who blamed
blacks for inciting violence by not accepting residential segregation. A
1938 Dallas housing survey reported 86 percent of black homes sub-
standard. Given the squalor in which so many blacks lived, the fact that
in 1930 black mortality rates more than doubled those of whites is not
surprising."
The drive for equal rights and improved living conditions met for-
midable opposition in the courts. In Texas the white primary formed
the major obstacle to black voting. In 1923 the state legislature revised
the election laws to prohibit explicitly black participation in Democratic
primaries. When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the statute a violation
of the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause in Nixon v.
Herndon, the state legislature rewrote the law deleting references to
blacks and empowering the State Democratic Executive Committee to
approve voting qualifications. In 1935 the nation's highest court ap-
proved the revision in Grovey v. Townsend, arrogating disfranchisement
to the political party by virtue of its being a nongovernmental voluntary
association.28
In 1936 a group of the state's most influential blacks, including An-
tonio Maceo Smith and Maynard H. Jackson of Dallas and Clifford
Jackson and Richard Grovey of Houston, reorganized the defunct In-
dependent Voters League as the Progressive Voters League to continue
the battle against white primaries. In 1938 several blacks filed a class
action suit in U.S. District Court seeking an injunction against the
Houston Democratic Executive Committee to prevent the exclusion of
black voters in that year's primary election. The court refused to grant
the injunction; the black petitioners considered an appeal but finally
did nothing. Not until 1944 did the U.S. Supreme Court rule the white
primary unconstitutional in the landmark Smith v. Allright decision. For
27 Bureau of the Census, Fzfteenth Census of the United States- I930 Unemployment (Washington,
D.C - Government Printing Office, 1931), I, 952-953; "Minutes of the Annual Meeting, Texas
Commission on Interracial Cooperation," Dec 6, 7, 1940, Houston Metropolitan Research
Center, Houston Public Library; Alwyn Barr, Black Texans- A Hzstory of Negroes in Texas,
1528-97 (Austin: Jenkins Publishing Co., Pemberton Press, 1973), 154-155; Work Projects
Administration Writers' Project, Dallas Guide and History, 507, 517, Dallas Express, Jan 18,
Mar. 1, 1941
28Robert Haynes, "Black Houstonians and the White Democratic Primary, 1920-1945," in
Francisco A. Rosales and Barry J. Kaplan (eds ), Houston. A Twentzeth Century Urban Frontier
(Port Washington, N Y Associated Faculty Press, 1983), 122-137; James Martin SoRelle, "The
Darker Side of 'Heaven' The Black Community in Houston, Texas, 1917-1945" (Ph.D. diss.,
Kent State University, 1980), 172-196.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 95, July 1991 - April, 1992, periodical, 1992; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117153/m1/44/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.