Race Distinctions in American LawStephenson, Gilbert Thomas
History
Race Distinctions in American Law
Stephenson, Gilbert Thomas
African Americans -- Politics and government; Law -- United States -- History; United States -- Race relations
Taking up these definitions in the various States—many of them included
within broader statutes—one finds that Alabama,[12] Kentucky,[13]
Maryland,[14] Mississippi,[15] North Carolina,[16] Tennessee,[17] and
Texas[18] define as a person of color one who is descended from a Negro
to the third generation inclusive, though one ancestor in each
generation may have been white. The Code Committee of Alabama of 1903
substituted “fifth” for “third,” so that at present in that State one is
a person of color who has had any Negro blood in his ancestry in five
generations.[19] The laws of Florida,[20] Georgia,[21] Indiana,[22]
Missouri,[23] and South Carolina[24] declare that one is a person of
color who has as much as one-eighth Negro blood: the laws of
Nebraska[25] and Oregon[26] say that one must have as much as one-fourth
Negro blood in order to be classed with that race. Virginia[27] and
Michigan apparently draw the line in a similar way. In Virginia, a
marriage between a white man and a woman who is of less than one-fourth
Negro blood, “if it be but one drop less,” is legal. A woman whose
father was white, and whose mother’s father was white, and whose
great-grandmother was of a brown complexion, is not a Negro in the sense
of the statute.[28] In 1866, the court of Michigan, under a law limiting
the suffrage to “white male citizens,” held that all persons should be
considered white who had less than one-fourth of African blood.[29] That
State gave the right to vote also to male inhabitants of Indian descent,
but its court held that a person having one-eighth Indian blood,
one-fourth or three-eighths African, and the rest white was not included
in that class.[30] Ohio limited the suffrage to white male citizens and
made it the duty of judges of election to challenge any one with a
“distinct and visible admixture of African blood,” but the latter
requirement was held unconstitutional in 1867,[31] the court saying
that, where the white blood in a person predominated, he was to be
considered white. This definition is interesting because it is the only
instance found of a court’s saying that a person with more than half
white blood and the rest Negro should be considered white. In contrast
with this is the following sweeping definition laid down in the
Tennessee statute: “All Negroes, Mulattoes, Mestizoes,[32] and their
descendants, having any African blood in their veins, shall be known in
this State as ‘Persons of Color.’”[33] Arkansas also, in its statute
separating the races in trains, includes among persons of color all who
have “a visible and distinct admixture of African blood.”[34]
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