Restoring the Fifteenth Amendment: A Turning Point in the Battle for Black Suffrage

In the aftermath of Reconstruction, white Southern lawmakers, determined to reassert control over the political and social order, constructed a sophisticated regime of voter suppression aimed at nullifying the Fifteenth Amendment.

This amendment, ratified in 1870, promised that no citizen would be denied the right to vote “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” But by the turn of the 20th century, it had been rendered hollow in much of the South through a series of legal and extra-legal mechanisms.

States like Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas enacted poll taxes, literacy tests, understanding clauses, and grandfather clauses—nominally race-neutral laws that were selectively applied to disenfranchise Black voters.

Mississippi’s 1890 constitution set the precedent, imposing barriers that white lawmakers frankly admitted were designed to suppress the Black vote. One delegate chillingly remarked, “We came here to exclude the Negro. Nothing short of this will answer.” These sentiments were echoed in newspapers and public discourse throughout the South, underscoring the systemic intent behind these policies.

The white primary emerged as one of the most potent tools in this arsenal. In states dominated by the Democratic Party, which effectively controlled all levels of government, denying Black citizens access to the primary was tantamount to denying them the vote. Since winning the primary all but guaranteed election, exclusion at that stage ensured Black citizens had no say in governance. The primary thus became the real election, and barring access to it was a form of disenfranchisement in all but name.

Starting in the 1920s, the NAACP began a deliberate legal campaign to dismantle these barriers. Their strategy was to challenge the white primary system in the courts, knowing that legislative change was nearly impossible under white-dominated Southern legislatures.

The first major success came with Nixon v. Herndon (1927), in which the Supreme Court invalidated a Texas law that explicitly barred Black citizens from voting in Democratic primaries. Dr. Lawrence Nixon, a Black physician and longtime NAACP member, brought the case. The Court unanimously held that such overt racial exclusion violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Texas responded by attempting to cloak its discrimination. It passed a new law allowing the Democratic Party’s executive committee to set primary qualifications. In Nixon v. Condon (1932), the Court again struck down the measure, holding that delegating such power to a party body did not absolve the state of responsibility. Justice Cardozo famously wrote that the state could not “escape constitutional limitations by the simple expedient of delegating power to a party committee.”

Unbowed, Texas adjusted again. In Grovey v. Townsend (1935), the Democratic Party’s state convention—not a government body—enacted a rule restricting membership (and thus voting) to whites. The Court, now presented with a case that involved a seemingly private actor, upheld the exclusion.

It ruled that the party convention was not an arm of the state and thus not bound by constitutional equal protection mandates. The ruling effectively gave state parties free rein to exclude on racial grounds so long as the state itself did not mandate the discrimination.

For a time, Grovey appeared to settle the issue. But legal scholars and civil rights attorneys saw the inconsistency in doctrine: when states engineered discriminatory systems through their proxies, the outcome was no different from overt racial bans. The NAACP, with Thurgood Marshall and the newly created Legal Defense Fund, set out to force a reconsideration.

The opportunity came with Smith v. Allwright (1944). Dr. Lonnie E. Smith, a Black dentist and NAACP member from Houston, attempted to vote in the 1940 Democratic primary. He was denied a ballot by S.S. Allwright, an election judge, solely because he was Black. Smith filed suit in federal court, represented by Thurgood Marshall and his team from the NAACP.

At stake was whether the Democratic Party’s exclusionary rule, implemented through its state convention, constituted “state action” for constitutional purposes. The lower courts, bound by Grovey, ruled against Smith. But the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, setting the stage for a decisive confrontation.

On April 3, 1944, the Court issued an 8–1 decision overturning Grovey and declaring the white primary unconstitutional. Writing for the majority, Justice Stanley Reed asserted that primary elections were an integral part of the electoral process and could not be separated from state action. “The privilege of membership in a party,” he wrote, “is not the equivalent of the right to vote.”

The Court held that because the state had delegated its electoral function to the Democratic Party, its primary was effectively public in nature. Thus, racial exclusion violated both the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. The fact that the party was technically a private organization did not matter; the state had made the party an instrument of the electoral process, and that process must be constitutionally protected.

This was a decisive shift in constitutional doctrine. It marked the Court’s recognition that facially private actors could not be allowed to perform public functions in discriminatory ways. Reed’s opinion warned that if states could avoid constitutional limits merely by outsourcing discriminatory practices, constitutional rights would be worthless.

Justice Owen Roberts dissented, arguing that the Court was overturning precedent without sufficient justification. He saw the decision as judicial overreach into what he considered private political associations. But the majority made clear: constitutional protections cannot be evaded through technicalities.

The impact was immediate. In Texas alone, Black voter registration more than tripled within a few years. In 1940, only 30,000 Black Texans were registered to vote; by 1952, that number had exceeded 170,000. In counties like Harris (Houston) and Dallas, NAACP chapters organized massive voter registration drives. Black civic organizations, churches, and local leaders mobilized to take full advantage of the new legal opening.

In other Southern states, similar changes followed. Although voter suppression did not disappear—poll taxes, literacy tests, and other tactics remained—Smith had removed a crucial pillar of Jim Crow. The psychological effect was equally significant: it demonstrated that the federal judiciary could and would strike down discriminatory practices, giving hope to millions disenfranchised by systemic racism.

Smith v. Allwright had ripple effects far beyond the immediate parties involved. It transformed the role of the Democratic Party in the South and began the long political realignment that would eventually see African Americans become a crucial Democratic constituency.

In the broader legal context, Smith laid the foundation for later victories. The case was cited in Terry v. Adams (1953), which involved the Jaybird Democratic Association in Fort Bend County, Texas—a private group that held whites-only pre-primaries. There, the Court ruled that even indirect primaries, if they effectively determined the outcome of an election, were subject to the same constitutional limits established in Smith.

More broadly, the case influenced later civil rights cases by establishing that constitutional rights could not be undermined by clever institutional arrangements. The Supreme Court would invoke similar logic in cases involving public accommodations, school desegregation, and housing discrimination.

The legal principles affirmed in Smith were echoed decades later in the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This landmark legislation banned many of the remaining tools of disenfranchisement, including literacy tests and other subjective barriers. It also required jurisdictions with histories of voter suppression to obtain federal approval before changing election laws—a preclearance regime aimed directly at the kind of subterfuge Smith exposed.

Civil rights leaders frequently referenced Smith as a foundational case. It was proof that the courts could act decisively to enforce the Constitution. Thurgood Marshall, who argued the case at just 35 years old, would go on to lead the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s broader litigation campaign and ultimately become the first Black Supreme Court Justice.

Today, Smith v. Allwright remains deeply relevant. While the white primary is gone, new mechanisms of exclusion have emerged. Strict voter ID laws, polling place closures, voter roll purges, and gerrymandering are frequently challenged on grounds reminiscent of Smith’s logic. These measures, though facially neutral, often have racially disparate effects.

Legal scholars argue that Smith provides a doctrinal anchor for challenging modern forms of disenfranchisement. The decision’s core insight—that states may not use procedural camouflage to exclude citizens from meaningful participation—resonates in contemporary voting rights debates. In recent years, courts have increasingly scrutinized whether election laws burden historically marginalized communities, much as the Court did in Smith.

The case also serves as a reminder of how vulnerable voting rights remain without vigilance. The 2013 Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder weakened the preclearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act, prompting concerns that states could once again adopt measures to restrict access to the ballot. In that sense, Smith’s warning remains as timely as ever: constitutional rights must not be eroded by technicalities or manipulated procedures.

Smith v. Allwright stands as one of the most significant voting rights cases in American history. It demolished the legal underpinnings of the white primary, empowered a generation of Black voters, and reaffirmed the principle that electoral participation must be equally open to all citizens.

More than a legal milestone, Smith symbolized a moral shift. It reflected a growing national consensus that democracy cannot tolerate exclusion, even when cloaked in the language of tradition or party autonomy. The Court's decision did not just change Texas election law—it changed the meaning of citizenship and participation in a constitutional democracy.

As the nation continues to debate the boundaries of election law, from redistricting to voter ID, Smith v. Allwright offers enduring guidance. It reminds us that democracy depends not only on the right to vote, but on meaningful access to the entire electoral process. In that light, the case is not just history—it is a continuing call to ensure that every citizen’s voice is heard and counted.