Hi, I'm the History Guy. I have a degree in history,
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April 3rd of 1944, the United States Supreme Court struck down a Texas state
law that allowed the Texas Democratic Party to set its own internal rules,
including excluding non-whites from membership in the party, and therefore excluding non-whites from
the right to vote in the Democratic primary. This decision was significant for a number of reasons,
not the least of which was that it had a clearer and larger immediate effect than
some much better known civil rights decisions of the day. And understanding why this decision
had such a large effect helps us to understand that interaction between culture, the courts,
and legislation, that helps us understand these landmark Supreme Court decisions and
how much effect they really have on how the country is governed. And so today we're going
to try to put some context around the "landmark" Supreme Court decision, Smith versus Allwright.
The Texas State Democratic Party had decided in their convention to restrict membership in the
Democratic Party, and therefore participation in the Democratic primary election, only to
white voters. As the Democratic Party in Texas had pretty much pushed out the Republicans that
meant that the only relevant election decisions in Texas excluded non-white voters. Lonnie Smith,
a black dentist from Houston, sued County official SS Allwright for the right to vote in the primary.
Smith was represented by legendary civil rights attorney Thurgood Marshall who would go on to
argue the landmark case, Brown versus the Board of Education, and then would be appointed to the
United States Supreme Court, America's first black US Supreme Court Justice. In an 8 to 1
decision the Supreme Court decided that the state of Texas had violated the Equal Protection Clause
of the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, when the state delegated its authority to the
Democratic Party to regulate their own primaries, thus allowing the practice of discrimination.
In effect, though not necessary early in text, what the decision did was affirm the universal right
to vote in all elections, including party primaries and not be excluded based on race.
While this may seem like common sense today, at the time it was rather a controversial judicial decision.
Just nine years earlier the Supreme Court had unanimously ruled in the case, Grovey
versus Townsend, that the parties, as private organizations, had the right to set their own
rules, and the court had distinguished between discrimination by private organizations and discrimination by the state.
In deciding that the state could not circumvent the 14th amendment
by delegating responsibilities to a private organization, Smith versus Allwright directly
overruled the decision in Grovey versus Townsend. Even more startling was that the court did not
argue that there was a change in situation or a change in facts, the court specifically argued
that the decision in Grovey versus Townsend was incorrect, and overruled. The shift from a 9 to
0 decision in 1935 to being overruled by an 8 to 1 decision just 9 years later, is unprecedented in U.S.
Supreme Court history. But almost as unprecedented was the immediate effect that the court decision
had. In 1940 just 3 percent of eligible black voters in the deep south were registered to vote,
by 1952 that was over 20%. In 1944 there were just 200,000 black voters registered in the south,
by 1948 that was 7 to 800,000 and the number was over a million by 1952. Scholar Darlene Clarke
Hinds argued that Smith versus Allwright was a watershed in the movement for black rights,
the beginning of the second reconstruction and the modern civil rights movement. All of
the advances in civil rights in the succeeding decades, she argued, would have been impossible
without striking down the white primary. Thurgood Marshall agreed, arguing that the case was,
"a giant milestone in the progress of Negro Americans towards full citizenship". This is
somewhat of a surprise since the decision itself was somewhat limited in scope, but the immediate
and measurable effect of Smith versus Allwright was actually much larger than the better-known
civil rights decisions of the era in Norris versus Alabama and Brown versus Board of Education.
Professor Michael Harmon, writing in the Florida State University Law Review in the fall of 2001,
argued that there were several specific reasons while the decision in Smith versus Allwright had a
uniquely large immediate impact. Among those, the whites in the South had softened their attitude
towards black suffrage, even though they still had strong attitudes towards school segregation,
that for various reasons, blacks in the South were better able to take advantage of the
decision and were more empowered to challenge local ordinances in the courts of law. And
finally, lower court's tired of states trying to circumvent the 14th amendment through shenanigans,
were more willing to take an expansive view of the Smith decision that it turned it into a
de facto guarantee of the right to vote in party primaries. In short, a confluence of different
social factors work together to give the decision a much larger impact than it otherwise might have
had. The conclusion is that the Supreme Court has actually a rather limited ability to change
natural attitudes, but a well timed Court decision can be a significant driving force.
It is important to note that Smith versus Allwright did not mark an end to racial
discrimination in the United States. Thurgood Marshall noted that despite fond hopes the
decision did not put an end to the fight for black voting rights. Even in 1952,
when black voter registration on the South had jumped from 3% to 20%,
that still meant that the vast majority of black Americans were still not registered to vote in the
south and they still faced institutional obstacles and determined, often violent,
opposition. And yet this decision had an enormous almost outsized impact and that begs the question,
what happened in the nine years between Grovey versus Townsend and Smith versus Allwright?
Well there were a lot of things that changed in America at the time but by far the single biggest
thing that happened during that period was the Second World War. The United States was at war
with an evil fascist regime that believed in Aryan racial supremacy. We saw ourselves as fighting for
democracy, for freedom against the fascists, and that meant that we started to want to live up to
our own ideals. In facing that evil we came up with a desire to address the evil in ourselves,.
And these barriers to blacks voting made even less sense when black Americans were overseas
dying for that same cause. And that brings us to the strangest irony of all, because the same court
that made the decision in Smith versus Allwright, made the despicable decision in Korematsu versus
the United States, to uphold the internment of Japanese-Americans during the Second World War.
Considered one of the worst Supreme Court decisions of all times, it was described by
legal scholar Bruce Fein, as "an odious and discredited artifact of popular bigotry." And
that's the irony, the same social force that drove the impact of Smith versus Allwright,
drove the bigotry of Korematsu versus the United States. So it seems in the end that the Supreme
Court is still a creature of their time. That they cannot save the nation from themselves. The
real lesson is that true and lasting change has to occur in the hearts of the people.
I'm the History Guy. I hope you enjoyed this edition of my channel, 5 minutes of history,
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