Law and Race Commons^™

Constitutional Law-Fourteenth Amendment-Discrimination In Selection Of Grand Jurors, Alan C. Boyd S. Ed.

Michigan Law Review

Defendant's conviction of murder was affirmed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which rejected defendant's claim that discrimination in selection of the indicting grand jury had violated his constitutional rights. Defendant pointed out that the Negro proportion of grand jurors had uniformly been less than the ratio of Negroes to the total population of the county, and that on the past twenty-one lists the commissioners had consistently limited the number of Negroes to not more than one on each grand jury. On certiorari to the United States Supreme Court, held, reversed. Limitation of the number of Negroes on …

Sanders: Juvenile Courts In North Carolina, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of JUVENILE COURTS IN NORTH CAROLINA By Wiley B. Sanders.

Corporations-Nonprofit Corporations-Expulsion Of Member By Board Of Directors, Paul W. Eaton, Jr.

Michigan Law Review

The board of directors of defendant, a nonprofit corporation, passed a resolution that persons should not be denied membership on racial, religious or political grounds. Plaintiff, a branch member of defendant, had enacted by-laws denying Negroes admission to its group. Defendant's board declared plaintiff's by-laws were in conflict with the resolution and threatened to expel plaintiff branch if its by-laws were not amended. Plaintiff brought suit to enjoin defendant from carrying out its threat. Held, injunction granted. No national by-law required admission of all races to membership in branches, nor did the national directors have power to expel a …

Constitutional Law--Due Process-Federal Restrictions On The Use Of Confessions In State Criminal Proceedings, F. L. Adamson

Michigan Law Review

Undisputed evidence established that petitioner, a negro boy of fifteen, was arrested at about midnight, October 19, 1945 and taken to police headquarters. He was questioned by the police with no friend or counsel present. He was not informed of his right to counsel or of his right to refuse to answer. At about five in the morning, October 20, he confessed. He was then informed of his rights and his statement taken and transcribed. He was photographed by a newspaper photographer, and then placed in jail. On October 23 he was, for the first time, taken before a magistrate …

Constitutional Law-Equal Protection-Judicial Enforcement Of Race Restrictive Covenant, Charles B. Blackmar S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

The highest courts of Missouri and Michigan, and the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, had held that restrictions against occupancy of land by negroes were enforceable by injunction. On certiorari, held, reversed. Enforcement of such restrictions by state courts constitutes a denial of equal protection of the laws. Enforcement by courts of the District violates the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and also it is contrary to the public policy of the United States to allow a federal court to enforce an agreement which a state court could not constitutionally enforce. Shelley v. Kraemer, (U.S. …

Constitutional Law--White Primaries--Rice V. Elmore, Irving Slifkin S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

The right of the negro to vote has constantly been challenged in attempts to destroy or at least to control the exercise of that right. The Fifteenth Amendment secures the right to vote free from interference on a racial basis by the states or the national government. In the states where there is a large negro population varied efforts have been attempted in order to control and nullify the negro vote. These efforts have been manifested in various forms-the grandfather clause, property ownership requirements, the poll tax, character tests, and literacy tests.

Constitutional Law-Fourteenth Amendment-Equal Protection Of The Laws-Racial Segregation In Public Educational Institutions, Neal Seegert S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

Segregation of races, particularly separation of white and colored races, has long been condoned by American courts as permissible under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Underlying the traditional view is the idea that the equal protection clause is not violated by segregation so long as equal facilities are provided for both races. On this basic premise a large number of jurisdictions, particularly the southern states, have predicated constitutional provisions and statutory enactments compelling racial segregation, while a number of other states where segregation has not been forbidden by express constitutional or statutory provision have achieved …

Constitutional Aspects Of Federal Anti-Poll Tax Legislation, Joseph E. Kallenbach

Michigan Law Review

The proposal to abolish by national law the requirement now prevailing in seven Southern states that voters shall have paid a poll tax in order to vote in any national election involves a constitutional issue of the first magnitude. In the decade immediately following the Civil War the constitutional division of authority between the national and state governments in dealing with the question of Negro suffrage became a point of bitter controversy in Congress. Out of this struggle came the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, with certain supporting legislation, the aim of which was to prohibit disfranchisement of …

Constitutional Law-State Court Enforcement Of Race Restrictive Covenants As State Action Within Scope Of Fourteenth Amendment, John A. Huston S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

The current housing shortage with the overcrowded living conditions and substandard accommodations which it imposes on the most numerous classes of society has made particularly significant in the competition for housing areas the discriminations generally enforced against negroes and other racial minority groups. Both normal population growth and the suspension of new construction during the great depression and the late war have contributed to an emergency in which the circumstances of our negro population are materially worse than those of any other group. Aggravating this result has been the shift in negro population occasioned by the wartime demand for industrial …

Constitutional Law-Interstate Commerce-Carriers-Validity Of State Statute Requiring Racial Segregation Of Passengers, George Brody S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

Appellant, a passenger on a motor common carrier, was traveling from Virginia to Baltimore. Pursuant to a Virginia statute requiring all passenger motor carrier vehicles to "separate without discrimination the white and colored passengers in their motor busses so that contiguous seats will not be occupied by persons of different races at the same time" the driver of the carrier upon which appellant was traveling requested her to vacate her seat so that it could be used by a white passenger. She refused and was arrested and convicted under authority of a statute punishing such refusal. The Virginia Supreme Court …

Labor Unions-Closed Shop And Arbitrarily Closed Or Partially Closed Union-Injunction, John S. Dobson

Michigan Law Review

The defendants appealed from an order of the lower court awarding a preliminary injunction which restrained the defendants from discharging or causing the discharge of the plaintiff and other Negro employees because they were not members of a labor union with which their employer has a closed shop agreement, but which will not grant Negroes full membership privileges. The defendants were: the plaintiff's employer; the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Shipbuilders and Helpers of America which is a labor union; and certain officials of the aforementioned union. There was a written contract between the employer and the International Brotherhood containing …

Covenants-Restrictions Upon The Use Of Land-Negroes

Michigan Law Review

Many years ago a subdivision in Detroit was platted, with recorded building restrictions. When ready for the sale of lots, the intended high character of the subdivision and its desirability for expensive residences was much advertised. An association, an informal organization of some of the owners of houses in the subdivision, assumed the right to pass upon the desirability of prospective lot purchasers, and there was some indication that the person who advertised and marketed most of the lots verbally agreed to submit to the association the names of prospective purchasers and assured some intending purchasers that colored persons would …

Constitutional Law-Congressional Primaries-Voting Rights Of Negroes, Everett S. Brown

Michigan Law Review

The petitioner, Lonnie E. Smith, a Negro citizen of Harris County, Texas, brought suit for damages against election judges who refused to give him a ballot or to permit him to cast a ballot in the primary election of July 27, 1940, for the nomination of Democratic candidates for federal and state officers. The refusal was alleged to have been solely because of Smith's race and color and consequently violated sections 31 and 43 of title 8 of the United States Code by depriving Smith of rights secured under provisions of the Federal Constitution. The District Court of the United …

Torts - Wrongful Exclusion From An Elevator - Damages For Mental Pain And Humiliation, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Plaintiff's wife, a Caucasian, having business with a tenant on the fifteenth floor, entered defendant's elevator containing other whites. She and a Negro woman were directed by the operator to take an elevator in the rear of the store used for freight and Negro passengers; and being ignorant of this latter fact, she used this elevator. Asserting that she was wrongfully excluded from the elevator for white people and thereby was considered to be a negro by both whites and colored people, she claimed to have suffered mental anguish, humiliation, and physical suffering. Held, the defendant, while not a …

Carriers - Common Carriers - Segregation Of Races - Discrimination, John C. Johnston

Michigan Law Review

Plaintiff, a negro, had purchased a railroad ticket entitling him to first class accommodations from Chicago, Illinois to Hot Springs, Arkansas. When the train entered Arkansas, the conductor, in purported compliance with an Arkansas statute requiring segregation of colored from white persons forced plaintiff to leave the Pullman car and ride in the second-class car set aside for colored passengers. Plaintiff alleged that this car was not equipped with the same conveniences which were provided for white passengers traveling first class, and he filed a complaint with the Interstate Commerce Commission claiming that he had been discriminated against in violation …

Parties - Representative Suits As Res Judicata- Rejection Of Doctrine Of Class Suits In Successive Actions To Enforce Mutual Covenants In Land, Gerald M. Lively

Michigan Law Review

Some 500 frontage owners in a certain described residential district entered into mutual covenants which stipulated against the sale to, or occupation of, such land by negroes. In an action to enjoin a breach of one of these covenants the defense was asserted that a condition precedent requiring ninety-five per cent of the frontage owners to sign the agreement had not been performed. On a trial of the merits it was found that only about fifty-four per cent of the frontage owners had actually signed. However, in a prior action, an owner, on behalf of herself and other like property …

Constitutional Law-Exclusion From Juries On Grounds Of Race And Color-Scottsboro Case

Michigan Law Review

A negro convicted of rape in one of the so-called "Scottsboro" cases moved to quash the indictment and the trial venire, alleging systematic exclusion of negroes from the grand and petit juries on the grounds of race and color. The trial court overruled the motions, and the Alabama Supreme Court sustained this decision, holding that the evidence failed to establish such exclusion. On certiorari to the United States Supreme Court, held, that the refusal to quash the indictment and trial venire was a denial of equal protection of the laws contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment, since the evidence on …

Constitutional Law - Discrimination Against Negroes - Control Of Party Membership, Everett S. Brown

Michigan Law Review

The petitioner, R. R. Grovey, allegedly a citizen of the United States and of Texas, and possessing all the qualifications of a voter, was refused a ballot for a Democratic party primary because he was of the Negro race. Grovey demanded ten dollars damages from the respondent, Albert Townsend, the county clerk, a state officer. The Revised Civil Statutes of Texas provide for primary elections and regulate absentee voting. When Grovey demanded of Townsend an absentee ballot it was refused in virtue of a resolution of the state Democratic convention of Texas, adopted May 24, 1932, as follows:

"Be it …

Segregation Of Residences Of Negroes, Arthur T. Martin

Michigan Law Review

Most white people do not want Negroes for neighbors. For many years this race prejudice alone seemed adequate to secure the type of domiciliary segregation which the majority desired. In recent years, however, Negro incursions into so-called white territory have become more numerous, and white landowners have resorted to legal devices to secure race exclusiveness in residential sections. In considering the validity of these segregation devices the courts have not ordinarily purported to take into account the social desirability of the end sought. No examination has been made of the factors back of Negro migration into white territory. No thought …

Primary Elections And The Constitution, Luther Harris Evans

Michigan Law Review

Recent attempts in Texas and elsewhere to exclude Negro voters from primary elections reveal the unsettled state of constitutional law in this field. Two struggles of principle, individualism versus police power and States' rights versus nationalism, are outlined in the judicial opinions reviewed below under the following headings: (I) Basis of state power over primaries; (II) Limitations on state power over primaries imposed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments; (III) Basis of state power over primaries for nominating United States Senators and Representatives; and (IV) Basis of national power over primaries for nominating United States Senators and Representatives.

Descent And Distribution - Issue Of Void Miscegenous Marriage As Heirs Under Legitimation Statute

Michigan Law Review

An Indian married a negress in Oklahoma. The proper forms were observed, the parties acted in good faith, and thereafter lived together as husband and wife. Children were born to them. The marriage was absolutely void under an Oklahoma statute prohibiting such miscegenation and making it a felony. On the father's death intestate, the guardian of the children petitioned for letters of administration. Held, that under Okla. Comp. Stat. 1921, sec. I 1303, reading, "The issue of all marriages null in law . . . are legitimate," the children of the void marriage took as heirs, and the petition …

Constitutional Law-Equal Protection-Disparity Of Privilege And Discrimination

Michigan Law Review

The equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment provides that no person or class of persons shall be denied the same protection of the laws that others in the same place and under like circumstances enjoy. But it has been said that "equality and not identity of privileges and rights is what is guaranteed to the citizen" by the fourteenth amendment. People v. Gallagher, 93 N. Y. 438, 45 Am. Rep. 232. Any law which in terms provides for identity of privileges and rights, but which operates in such a manner as to produce political or economic inequality. because of …

Restraints On Alienation-Restrictive Covenants-Racial Discrimination

Michigan Law Review

Three cases decided in 1925 in three widely separated parts of the United States, namely, California, Michigan, and the District of Columbia, raise the question: How far may one give legal effect to his racial prejudices through the medium of covenants and conditions inserted in wills and inter vivos conveyances? An attempt was made in each of these cases to restrict the use or sale of the property involved to white persons or to deny it to colored persons. Two of the cases upheld the restriction; one declared it invalid.

Constitutional Validity Of Statute Barring Negroes From Primary Elections

Michigan Law Review

The history of suffrage in the South during the last thirty-five years has been largely a story of the adoption and administration of discriminatory regulations devised to catch the negro without debarring any considerable number of white people. This legal disfranchisement has been accomplished by property or educational qualifications possessed generally by whites but not by negroes, or by giving a great deal of discretion to election and registration officials, who, understanding what is expected of them, find quite uniformly that the negroes do not meet the requirements while the white applicants generally do. How the letter of the Fifteenth …