Home / Full timeline / The U.S. Supreme Court, in Rogers v. Alabama, decides that the exclusion of Black Americans from juries was a violation of the equal protection clause.
The U.S. Supreme Court, in Rogers v. Alabama, decides that the exclusion of Black Americans from juries was a violation of the equal protection clause.
1904 (Feb 15)
The U.S. Supreme Court, in Rogers v. Alabama decided that the exclusion of Black Americans from juries was a violation of the equal protection clause. The case was brought to the high court by Dan Rogers, a Black man who had been convicted of murder. His attorney argued that Blacks had been systematically excluded from his grand jury, and that the exclusion was a violation of the fourteenth amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed and overturned Rogers's conviction by the Alabama Supreme Court. Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote for the court that prior Supreme Court decisions had already set a precedent that barred racial discrimination in grand jury selections.
References:
- • Hornsby, Alton. Chronology of African-American History: Significant Events and People from 1619 to the Present. Detroit: Gale Research, 1995.