Terry v. Adams

Terry v. Adams, with its invalidation of the whites-only primary election procedure in Fort Bend County, Texas, marked the end of the southern white primary, an institution that kept blacks from voting during the first half of the twentieth century.

During the first half of the twentieth century, the Democratic party completely dominated southern politics. Because of that domination, the Democratic primary was the only meaningful election. If a citizen could not vote in the primary, he or she was virtually excluded from the electoral process. In 1889, the Jaybird Democratic Association of Fort Bend County, Texas was founded to promote "good government." Since its beginning in the post-Reconstruction period, its membership had been limited to white people, who automatically became members if their names appeared on the official list of county voters. Each election year, the association held the Jaybird primary in May, which selected by ballot the candidates that the association would endorse for public office in the county. For over 60 years, the association's county-wide candidates ran unopposed, dominated the Democratic primaries, and were elected to office.

On 16 May 1950, the petitioners instituted a class action suit on behalf of the black citizens of Fort Bend County, stating that they had been denied the right to participate in the primaries of the association solely based on their race and color. The association responded that they were not a political party, but a private voluntary group, and the Fifteenth Amendment, which prohibits the government at both the federal and state level from denying a person the right to vote on the basis of race, did not apply to them. Adams, president of the Jaybird Association, testified that the purpose of the association was to have the white population vote at a time when the black population could not. The district court ruled that the association was a political party and that its discriminatory exclusion of blacks from the primary was invalid. It also ruled that blacks were legally entitled to vote in the Jaybird primary. The court of appeals reversed this decision, stating that because the association's primaries were not controlled by the state, the Fifteenth Amendment did not apply.