Male: In 1979, two cases appeared before the Supreme Court concerning the then common practice of only allowing whites to serve on juries.
Roger L. Goldman: Strouter versus West Virginia has to do with whether or not a state can basically discriminate on the basis of race. And it's pretty cleat that if the Fourteenth Amendment means anything. It means that that something a State cannot do because of your color. The State can’t disable you. In this case, they didn’t allow black to serve on jury. So, this was the first important case interpreting the meaning of race in the Fourteenth Amendments.
Male: Taylor Strouter and his wife, Annie, lived in Willing, West Virginia. Married in 1971, the Strouters found marriage extremely difficult. Annie was cheating on Taylor. In 1874, Strouter was arrested from murdering his wife with a hatchet. Strouter was tried and convicted but the case appealed on the content of the jury. Strouter was a black man but pursuant to state law at that time, the jury was entirely White. His case arrived at the Supreme Court in 1879.
William Strong: The right to a trial by jury is guaranteed to every citizen of the United States by the Constitution of our country, and the Constitution of juries is very essential part for the protections such a mode of trial is intended to secure. Therefore, that the statute of West Virginia discriminating in the selection of jurors as it does against Negroes because of the color amounts to a denial of the equal protection of the laws to a colored man when he is put upon trial for an alleged defense against the state.
Male: In 1878, a Virginia judge named JD Coles was arrested for borrowing non-whites from the selection poll for juries. Thereby assuring all white juries decided on the same day. The case was a simple violation of law.
William Strong: No citizen possessing all other qualifications which are or may be prescribed by law shall be disqualified for service as grant or petty juror in any Court of the United States or of any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Male: With these two decisions, the Supreme Court declared that all citizens were equally eligible for jury duty. Advancing the slowly but surely the cause of civil rights.
James W. Ely, Jr.: These are two jury selection cases. They do suggests, I think, both the Supreme Courts commitment to enforcing equal rights but also the limitations that they saw in the latter part of the 19th century.
Michael Middleton: Those were flat out cases of exclusion of people from participating in standard routine governmental processes. Clear violation of the anti-discrimination focus of the Fourteenth Amendment and they had no choice in the matter.
James W. Ely, Jr.: So, as a result, that’s a lots of clumsy case. This not saying, we’ll have like separate but equal facilities. That’s just saying they’ll be no role for black at all in juries. Well, the Supreme Court I think not surprisingly struck that down. They never -- people have never work like this. They never accepted the statute which just said, they will be no black voters. Or they will be no jurors. That what's the kind of thing they would say, the Fourteenth Amendment was design to prevent.
Roger L. Goldman: It would have been very surprising if the case come out differently. They were really required to come out with that decision.
James W. Ely, Jr.: I think they felt that this is what the law demanded. If the Fourteenth Amendment didn’t prevent a state from saying, “Just white jurors can be called. It didn’t have any meaning at all.” So in other words, at some point you have to say look at this, this just doesn’t square well by the Constitution as we see it.
But I don't think the Supreme Court in this time period. This -- what's the 1870, 1880s, I don't think the Supreme Court has what you could call a thorough going equal rights agenda at all. I think that by this time the fires of the reconstruction had begun to cool. Now, some individuals may still have strong commitments but I think neither society at large nor the members of the Supreme Court had strong feeling on this subject.
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