He was the 1st Tarrant County candidate to seek the votes of women. It didn’t pay off.

Women could not vote in Texas general elections until the 19th Amendment was added to the Constitution in 1920. Voting for public office, like sitting on juries, was a man’s prerogative.

From 1895, Texas women had fought for the vote through various organizations but with little luck until 1918. In March of that year the legislature made it legal for women to vote in primaries. In Texas, the only party primary that mattered was the Democratic primary. That summer, women got their first chance to make their voices heard in state politics.

One candidate for Tarrant County sheriff, Benjamin Tolbert Johnson, was the first local candidate to reach out to the women. “Tol” Johnson, as everyone called him, placed his card in the Star-Telegram openly appealing to “the Ladies and Men Voters of Tarrant County.” His two opponents, incumbent Nace Mann and Sterling Clark, made no such pitch.

Johnson was a veteran lawman who had served three terms as a deputy sheriff and two terms as a constable before throwing his hat in the ring to be sheriff. As a deputy sheriff he had been assigned to 17th District Court for the sensational trials of playboy Beal Sneed in 1912 and Baptist preacher J. Frank Norris in 1914, winning kudos all around for how he handled the juries and the mob of spectators.

Though described by one reporter as “a meek little man, slight of build and extremely quiet in his dress,” Johnson was a man’s man who chewed tobacco, hunted with his pals, and brought in the toughest criminals. He also habitually went about his duties unarmed, a novelty in any branch of law enforcement.

Johnson had a soft side, treating sequestered juries like they were his children, running errands for them, bringing in their favorite foods, and calling their wives to tell them hubby was OK. Everybody agreed Tol Johnson was a nice man, but the biggest thing he had going for him was his wife Lula.

In his first run for public office, the race for constable of precinct #1 in 1914, Johnson credited his victory to “the little woman.” Though she was “unversed in the dark and devious ways of professional politics,” Lula Johnson knew how to work a crowd. She attended scores of events with her husband, circulating through the audience introducing herself and passing out Tol’s campaign cards.

“Pardon me,” Lula would say over and over, “I am Mrs. Tol Johnson, and my husband is a candidate for constable. Don’t forget us when you vote.”

It may have been the husbands who voted, but the wives and children remembered the nice Mrs. Johnson. After Tol won in November, he graciously gave Lula all the credit for carrying the North Side, where he was not well known until she began campaigning for him tirelessly. She was his untitled and unpaid campaign manager.

Johnson proved to be an excellent constable, one of the best Tarrant County ever had, and his peers agreed. He was elected president of the State Constables’ Association in 1916.

Unfortunately, Lula Johnson’s magic could not carry the day in the 1918 primary. Tol lost to Sterling P. Clark, who went on to win the general election in November.

Johnson’s career did not prosper subsequently either. In a few years he was reduced to working as “night watchman” at the jail for Sheriff J.R. Wright. But Lula remained his biggest fan to the end.

Author-historian Richard Selcer is a Fort Worth native and proud graduate of Paschal High and TCU.