might not select Negroes for jury service.

The case of _Williams_ v. _Mississippi_ was more interesting. The law
of that State prescribed the qualifications of voters and of grand and
petit juries and invested the administrative officers with a large
discretion in determining what citizens have the necessary
qualifications. As it appeared that in the use of their discretion
they would exclude Negroes from such juries it was contended that the
act of Mississippi was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. The
court held, however, that the Mississippi law could not be held
repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment merely on a showing that the law
might operate as a discrimination against the Negro race, in absence
of proof of an actual discrimination in the case under consideration.
This ground has often proved convenient for the Supreme Court of the
United States in dodging the question whether or not the Negroes must
be protected in the rights guaranteed them by the Constitution.

This case was decided in 1897 and two years later Mr. Justice Gray,
giving the opinion of the court in the case of _Carter_ v.
_Texas_,[54] said that the exclusion of all persons of African race
from a grand jury which finds an indictment against a Negro in a State
court, when they are excluded solely because of their race or color
denies him the equal protection of the laws in violation of the
Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, whether
such exclusion is done through the action of the legislature, through
the courts, or through the executive or administrative officers of the
State. This was substantially the position taken in the case of
_Strauder_ v. _West Virginia_ twenty years earlier.

The Negroes received some encouragement, too, from the decision of
_Rogers_ v. _Alabama_.[55] It was held that there had been a denial of
the equal protection of the laws by a ruling of a State court upon the
motion to quash an indictment on account of the exclusion of Negroes
from the grand jury list, which motion, though because of its being in
two printed octavos, was struck from the files under the color of
local practice for prolixity, contained an allegation that certain
provisions of the newly adopted State constitution, claimed to have
the effect of disfranchising Negroes because of their race, when such
action worked as a consideration in the minds of the jury
commissioners in reaching their decision. The court held in _M