The Rise of the Southern All-White Primary.

In 1923 the Texas General Assembly enacted a statute that barred all "persons of color" from voting in state Democratic Party primaries. On 26 July 1924 in El Paso, Dr. L. A. Nixon, a black dentist, attempted to vote in the Democratic primary as he had done in the past. Nixon had paid the required annual poll tax, but Charles Herndon, the judge of elections for Precinct 9, refused to issue him a ballot.

A Legal Challenge to the Whites-Only Primary.

At the urging of the El Paso branch of the NAACP, Nixon filed a lawsuit against Herndon. Claiming that his constitutional right to vote — as guaranteed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments — had been violated and that he had been denied his franchise on the basis of race, he sought $5,000 in punitive damages from Herndon and the...