Testimony of Representative Barbara Jordan Before the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights, House Committee on the Judiciary, February 26, 1975, Extension of the Voting Rights Act Page: 3 of 28

                                
Representative Barbara Jordan                            page 2
should be done.
My first attempts to become a member of the Texas
House of Representatives were thwarted by the same type of
discriminatory voting practices forbidden by the Voting
Rights Act.   In 1962, when I first ran for the Texas House,
Harris County (Houston) was not divided into single member
districts.   I had to run at large -- against all other
candidates.   I lost.  I lost again in 1964.   I could not get
elected in an at-large election.   In 1966 the Texas legislature
was forced to reapportion itself.   In Reynolds v. Sims the
United States Supreme Court had applied the "one man - one vote"
rule of Baker v. Carr to state legislative districts.    The
reapportionment created a new, single-member State Senatorial
District in which I lived.   I ran and won.  Absent the- Supreme
Court ruling, I would have lost again. The same reapportionment
which created single member districts in Harris County created
at-large districts in Bexar County (San Antonio) and Dallas
County (Dallas). Another reapportionment in 1972 kept
Bexar and Dallas at-large.   Had the Voting Rights Act of
1965 applied to Texas, the state would have had to submit
the 1966 and 1972 reapportionments to the Attorney General.
He probably would have objected.   But the Act did not apply to
Texas.  The Attorney General did not object.    It was not
until 1973 that the United States Supreme Court once again
intervened.   It held at-large elections in Bexar and Dallas
counties had a discriminatory effect on blacks and browns and