Jack of Harts

Texas spent the first three decades of the Twentieth Century expanding their economy in an onrushing boom that seemingly nothing could stop. Eastern cotton plantations generated a strong cash crop, northern ranchers fed beef to the nation, western oil wells produced the fuel that moved people and supplies throughout America, and southern ports imported and exported goods from and to all over the world. The great cities were some of America’s most cosmopolitan population centers on rich rivers and harbors, and a man could ride a hundred miles without seeing a single person in the vast expanses of the western and northern plains. Texas was an economic titan that many thought would never fall.

Woodrow Wilson’s Presidency was a time of great change in the United States of America. His Democrats passed the 16th Amendment that overruled the Supreme Court ban on Federal Income Taxes, and he quickly initiated the first income taxes in 1913 as well as oversaw major tariff reform. He also pressed for the creation of the Federal Reserve and introduced national segregation into the federal workplaces, the military, and other elements of public life. The 17th Amendment made the Senate seats popularly elected, and the 18th Amendment introduced Alcoholic Prohibition. He also brought America into World War I and spearheaded the creation of the League of Nations. And he screened the first movie in the White House, The Birth of a Nation, which denigrated the Negroes and inspired the recreation of the Ku Klux Klan it portrayed as heroes of the Southern People. It truly was a time of fundamental change in America.

With Negroes banned from carrying weapons to defend themselves and successfully denied the right to vote, what power base Republicans had in Texas and the other Southern States effectively evaporated. The literacy tests and poll taxes also weeded out many of the poorer White families, but that was no matter. Those the Democrats wanted to vote were granted grandfather status. The rest were just Poor White Trash who could not be trusted to vote the way they were told, so losing their votes was a feature, not a bug. Texas voter turnout dropped from nearly 90% to just over 20%, allowing the Democrats to generate a solid lock on political power. Similar disenfranchisement tactics in other Southern States built a nearly insurmountable Democrat majority that would dominate national politics for a century.