Smith v. Allwright

Smith v. Allwright ended forever the state- sanctioned denial of the voting rights of large groups of citizens based on their race. Subsequent attempts to exclude African Americans from political participation would include poll taxes and literacy tests, but these could only be directed against individuals, not entire minority groups. The final battles against this sort of individual exclusion would be fought in the 1950s and 1960s. The ruling also continued the development of the public function concept as first delineated in Classic, which held that the Court had jurisdiction over the actions of certain ostensibly private organizations and institutions if their functions were judged to be public in nature.