Gov. Adkins and Race

In its 1944 Smith v. Allwright decision, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the use of all-white party primaries in the South that were a significant barrier to full black participation in the electoral process. Arkansas Democrats sought to oppose the ruling by initiating a complex “double primary” system that provided for city and statewide primaries that excluded blacks, and federal primaries at which blacks could vote, but only at segregated ballot boxes. When leading black Democrat Dr. John Marshall Robinson expressed his support for the white Democratic candidate that year, it was rebuffed. The incumbent governor Homer Adkins retorted, “If I cannot be nominated by the white voters of Arkansas I do not want the office.”