their former masters felt
enraged against the freedmen because of their sudden release from
bondage, they too often perpetrated upon the freedmen crimes for which
the Negro had no redress in courts, for white persons constituted the
accusers, the prosecutors, the judges, and the juries. Immediately
following the Civil War, before the amendments of the Constitution
enacted in the special behalf of the race were effected, Negroes were
by the Black Codes deprived of all of the rights of citizens and
nothing bore more grievously upon them than the deprivation of the
right to serve on juries. Some States had special laws carrying out
this prohibition. The first case of consequence requiring an
interpretation of the State law to this effect was that of _Strauder_
v. _West Virginia_,[47] already mentioned above. In this case the
court took high constitutional ground. It was held that "a law of West
Virginia limiting to white persons, twenty-one years of age and
citizens of the State, the right to sit upon juries, was a
discrimination which implied a legal inferiority in civil society,
which lessened the security of the right of the colored race, and was
a step toward reducing them to a condition of servility." The right of
a man of color that, in the selection of jurors to pass upon his life,
liberty, and property, there shall be no exclusion of his race and no
discrimination against them because of color, was asserted in a number
of cases, to wit: _Virginia_ v. _Rives_,[48] _Neal_ v. _Delaware_,[49]
_Gibbons_ v. _Kentucky_.[50]

In the case of _Bush_ v. _The Commonwealth of Kentucky_[51] the Negro
faced an additional difficulty in that the court held that wherein
there was no specific law excluding persons from service upon juries
because of their race or color, that the petitioner would have to show
evidence to that effect. In the case of _Smith_ v. _The State of
Mississippi_[52] it was held that the omission or refusal of officers
to include Negro citizens in the list from which jurors might be drawn
is not, as to a Negro subsequently brought to trial, a denial of equal
protection of laws. In the case of _Murray_ v. _The State of
Louisiana_[53] the decision was that the fact that a law confers on
the jury commissioners judicial power in the selection of citizens for
jury service, does not involve a conflict with the Fourteenth
Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, although in the
exercise of such power they