How were blacks excluded from juries in the US southern states in the 1930s?
score:8
Traditionally most municipalities in the USA select their jury pool based on their state's voter rolls. That is in fact how Alabama does it today.
This is probably chiefly for convenience sake. A state's voter registrations is about the only convenient database of "of age" residents and where they live that the state (and everyone in it) has access to. Particularly back before the computer age. However, it does have the side effect that if your voter rolls are skewed, your jury pools will be as well.
Alabama of course had very skewed voter rolls in the early 20th Century. From about 1890 to 1965, Jim Crow was the rule in the South, including Alabama. Almost no black Americans could vote.
Those who could not vote were not eligible to serve on juries and could not run for local offices. They effectively disappeared from political life, as they could not influence the state legislatures, and their interests were overlooked.
*emphasis mine
The typical methods used were poll taxes and literacy tests. Both tended to include grandfather clauses that gave a free pass if you were related to someone eligible to vote the year before slavery was abolished (a clever, if transparent, bit of legal trickery). In practice, both tended to be selectively applied to only black applicants. It didn't stop there though, in addition to numerous other onerous requirements, in Alabama you got "doxed" as well:
Your name was published in the local newspaper listing of those who had applied to register. That was to make sure that all of your employers, landlords, mortgage-holders, bank loan officers, business-suppliers, and so on, were kept informed of this important event. And, of course, all of the information on your application was quietly passed under the table to the White Citizens Council and KKK for appropriate action. Their job was to encourage you to withdraw your application — or withdraw yourself out of the county — by whatever means they deemed necessary.
So southern blacks were effectively living in a terrorist state.
This is of course the essential backdrop to Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.
Upvote:0
Your statement is incorrect on two counts. First of all, it is not true that the "absence" from the pool denies due process. Secondly, the violation is not of the Due Process clause of the Constitution, it was held to be a violation of the 14th Ammendment. The violation itself occurs when potential jurors are deliberately excluded from the pool. If by chance they are not present, it is not a violation. This is what it says in a contemporary legal handbook:
While a negro charged with crime is not entitled to a negro jury or to a mixed jury, the federal Constitution guarantees him against any discrimination against the negro race in the selection of a jury by whom he is to be tried.
The problem was that it was a common practice in some places for jury commissioners to exclude so-called "negroes" from jury pools on the grounds that they were unfit to serve as jurors. In places where this was occurring, courts routinely overturned verdicts as violations of the 14th Ammendment.
The mechanism of this exclusion is that the jury commissioner would send summonses only to citizens in well off neighborhoods and if a black showed up accidentally the commissioner would just excuse them immediately.
More post
- 📝 Have fair-skinned peoples ever been the lower/oppressed class?
- 📝 What WWII fighter raid did my great-uncle misremember?
- 📝 What is Adios Bruce Lee?
- 📝 When was this picture taken?
- 📝 Did pagan tribes in the Arab peninsula use bells for superstitious or religious reasons before and with the introduction of Islam?
- 📝 How influential was the Jewish boycott against Nazi Germany?
- 📝 Can someone explain the joke that killed Chrysippus of Soli?
- 📝 What role if any did Ligachev play in the 1991 coup attempt against Gorbachev?
- 📝 When, and where, was the word 'Anglican' first used in the context of the Protestant Church of England?
- 📝 Is the Krishna (a god within Hinduism), an appropriated historical figure?
- 📝 What was the name of Captain Kidd's ship?
- 📝 Has the Scythe ever been used as a weapon?
- 📝 How can we be confident that Tacitus really wrote his Histories and Annals?
- 📝 How many Black Panthers were killed in 'justified homicide' that was later overturned?
- 📝 Why do biscuits depict ships?
- 📝 How are historical nutrition data gathered?
- 📝 Was the tugboat ever part of a WWII battle group?
- 📝 Do the Federalist papers ever mention the Native Americans in any substantative way?
- 📝 Which nations have armed prisoners and sent them to war?
- 📝 Context for peace between UK and Germany around the Fall of France
- 📝 Did Andrew Jackson think the earth was flat?
- 📝 What was the Soviet reaction to the revelations about secret US programs like Projects ARTICHOKE, MKULTRA, MOCKINGBIRD, etc., revealed in the 1970s?
- 📝 Does somebody know anything about the original "Tour de Croy" tower?
- 📝 WWII: What navy controlled the Mediterranean during the North African Campaign?
- 📝 What is this soldier's regiment?
- 📝 Does Siquieros' Echo of a Scream resemble a known news photo from the Second Sino-Japanese War?
- 📝 How were tanks scrapped after World War Two?
- 📝 Why were so few Koreans enlisted in the Japanese Army before conscription was introduced in 1944?
- 📝 Why didn't the Great Awakening spread to the Spanish Colonies?
- 📝 If the nazi is a far-right party, why is it socialist?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 How were blacks excluded from juries in the US southern states in the 1930s?
- 📝 How were interracial relationships between African-Americans and Latinos treated in Southern states before the Loving decision?
- 📝 Why did the southern states secede from the U.S.?
- 📝 Were bookshops 'common' in the late 19th century, and how did they differ from modern ones?
- 📝 Why were women excluded from the succession line in the Meiji constitution?
- 📝 How many British navy officers were from lower classes at the end of 18th century?
- 📝 How were new states admitted to the Union?
- 📝 How were the Morisco refugees from Europe received in North Africa, given that they were foreigners and Christian?
- 📝 Why were Muslims in Western Thrace and Christians in Constantinople excluded from the population exchange?
- 📝 How widespread was dueling in the United States from its formation to 1860?
- 📝 Why were blacks still victimized in the Northern states after slavery's abolition?
- 📝 How did Southern slaveholders in the United States relate to the Caribbean and Latin America?
- 📝 Did the Southern States make any attempt to secede from the Union through an act of Congress?
- 📝 How were political factions in the late Roman republic different from political parties today?
- 📝 How big was the percentage of white people in the USA who were not against granting the blacks equal rights?
- 📝 How independent were the Eastern European countries from the Soviet Union?
- 📝 If West Virginia could legally secede from Virginia, why couldn't Southern states secede from the USA?
- 📝 Did people from the cities of Uruk, Ur and Sumer have knowledge/recollection of how old their cities were (say, recollection after 2000 BCE)?
- 📝 How do historians and linguists know how to pronounce the names from non-phonetic scripts?
- 📝 How were smallpox vaccines enforced in the US?
- 📝 How severe were the casualties in ancient/medieval battles?
- 📝 Why would silk underwear disqualify you from the United States military draft?
- 📝 How did the American Civil War help the U.S economy recover from the Panic of 1857 given that civil wars are extremely destructive?
- 📝 How was the United States able to produce excellent tanks in 1942?
- 📝 How did gold come to symbolize lower ranks than silver in the United States Air Force?
- 📝 How kind were the Muslim occupations of North Africa?
- 📝 How were horses disembarked from sail ships?
- 📝 How were the cities of Milan and Bruges spared by the Black Death?
- 📝 How beneficial were war bonds to the US during WWII
- 📝 Why were nomadic tribes (like the Mongols) from the Eurasian steppes a much reduced threat from the 15th century onwards?