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
County No. 2, 8,000 white people, 11,700 Negroes: “... Negroes sitting
on jury and paying poll-tax is a thing of the past in my county. Only
about 25 or 30 [are] registered. Disfranchised on educational
qualification.”
County No. 3, 3,000 white people, 23,000 Negroes: “In my judicial
district there are five counties, in three of which Negroes serve upon
the juries in about the proportion that they are qualified under the
law. The qualifications for jurors are very strict in this State and
comparatively few Negroes can qualify legally. In limited numbers they
make very satisfactory jurors when the rights of their people are
involved. As a rule, a Negro does not like to try a white man’s case;
they are much more inclined to convict Negroes charged with crime than
are the white jurors, and Negro defendants always challenge Negro
jurors. In the ‘Black Belt’ of Mississippi, a Negro can always receive a
fair trial in the courts, but this is not so certain in the white
counties. In the two counties where Negroes do not serve upon the
juries, there are practically no Negroes qualified under the law,
because none are registered voters.”
County No. 4, 6,000 white people, 18,000 Negroes: “We don’t have any
Negro jurors at all in this county. We have very few registered Negroes
in the county.”
County No. 5, 7,000 white people, 7,000 Negroes: “... Negroes do sit on
juries in this county at times. They have a right to serve as jurors
when they have duly registered and paid their tax and some other
qualifications.... But the Board of Supervisors draws the names of 200
or more persons on the first Monday of January in each year and puts
them in a box, so many for each supervisor’s district. But of late years
the supervisors have not put many names of Negroes in the jury-box;
therefore, we have not had very [many] Negro jurors. But we have one or
two Negro jurors nearly every term of our court [circuit court]....”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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