artin_
v. _The State of Texas_, however,[56] that a discrimination against
Negroes because of their race in the selection of grand or petit
jurors as forbidden by the Fourteenth Amendment is not shown by
written motion to quash, respectively, the indictment of the panel of
petit jurors, charging such discrimination where no evidence was
introduced to establish the facts stated in the omissions. It is not
sufficient merely to prove that no persons of color were on the jury.

As certain States wished to make the government further secure in the
elimination of Negroes from juries, after making the qualifications
for voters unusually rigid so as to exclude persons of African
descent, they easily established the same qualifications for jurors,
to relieve persons of color also from that service. In the case of
_Franklin_ v. _South Carolina_[57] the court held that there was no
discrimination against Negroes because of their race in the selection
of the grand jury made by the laws of South Carolina,[58] giving the
jury commissioner the right to select electors of good moral character
such as they may deem qualified to serve as jurors, being persons of
sound mind and free from all legal exceptions. A motion, therefore, to
quash an indictment against a Negro for disqualification of the grand
jurors who must be electors, because of a change in the State
constitution of South Carolina respecting the qualifications of
electors, did not violate the Act of Congress, June 25, 1868, and,
therefore, did not present to the Supreme Court of the United States a
question of a denial of Federal right where there is nothing in the
record to show that the grand jury as actually impaneled contained any
person who was not qualified as an elector under the earlier State
constitution, which was, according to the allegation, so made up as to
exclude Negroes on account of their color. The Supreme Court of the
United States then took no account of the intent or the spirit of the
law maker as this tribunal had been accustomed to do in cases of
constitutional import and left upon the Negro the burden of performing
the difficult task of showing that he had been discriminated against
on account of his color when the discrimination could be easily
effected without the possibility of his actually producing any
evidence that on the face of itself could convince the court.

SUFFRAGE

As already mentioned above the Negroes during this period were
strugg