as a former confederate state, texas had a history of jim crow laws, disfranchisement of its african-american and mexican-american populations, and single-party democratic rule outside local governments in a few unionist german-american counties (chiefly gillespie and kendall) of central texas. since 1930 no republicans had served in either house of the texas legislature, and in his two 1930s landslides franklin delano roosevelt had won over 87% of texas’ ballots.