Note 11 — AMENDMENT 15

321 U.S. 649 (1944). Notwithstanding that the South Carolina Legislature, after the decision in Smith v. Allwright, repealed all statutory provisions regulating primary elections and political organizations conducting them, a political party thus freed of control is not to be regarded as a private club and for that reason exempt from the constitutional prohibitions against racial discrimination contained in the Fifteenth Amendment. Rice v. Elmore, 165 F. (2d) 387 (1947); certiorari denied, 333 U.S. 875 (1948). See also Brown v. Baskin, 78 F. Supp. 933, 940 (1948) which held violative of the Fifteenth Amendment a requirement of a South Carolina political party, which excluded Negroes from membership, that white as well as Negro qualified voters, as a prerequisite for voting in its primary, take an oath that they will support separation of the races.