Plaintiffs
Frank Guinn, J. J. Beal
Defendant
United States
Plaintiffs' Claim
That the federal government had been wrong to prosecute these two Oklahoma election officials for enforcing an Oklahoma voting regulation that became known as the "Grandfather clause." The government believed that the "Grandfatherclause" deprived African Americans of their right to vote.
Chief Defense Lawyers
James C. McReynolds, U.S. Attorney General; John W. Davis, U.S. Solicitor General
Chief Lawyer for Plaintiff
Joseph W. Bailey
Justices for the Court
William Rufus Day, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Charles Evans Hughes, Joseph RuckerLamar, Joseph McKenna, Mahlon Pitney, Willis Van Devanter, Edward Douglass White (writing for the Court)
Justices Dissenting
None (James Clark McReynolds did not participate)
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
21 June 1915
Decision
That the Oklahoma voting regulation did in fact violate the Fifteenth Amendment and unconstitutionally deprive African Americans of their right to vote.
Significance
A unanimous Supreme Court had for the first time struck down a state law disenfranchising African Americans; however, Oklahoma almost immediately found another way to continue discriminating against black voters and the federal government took no action, leaving black Americans effectively disenfranchised in much of the nation until the voting rights movement of the 1960s.
The story of African American voting rights begins with the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment soon after the end of the Civil War. The Fifteenth Amendment was very simple. It had only two sentences:
For a while, during the period known as Reconstruction, the Fifteenth Amendment was actually enforced. Federal troops occupied the states of the former Confederacy to make sure that black Americans had the right to vote. But when federal troops were withdrawn in 1873, Southern states found many ways to makevoting a whites-only endeavor. In addition to outright terrorism by groups like the Ku Klux Klan, many states sought to prevent black voting by a systemof laws and rules.
One of the best-known ways of restricting voting was the "literacy test." Being able to read, for example, a part of the state constitution might be madea requirement for voting. In those times, many people, both black and white,could not read or could not read well. A registrar might ask a white voter toread only a simple word or sentence, or might coach or help him, whereas a black voter might be asked to read a long, complicated passage. Technically, literacy tests were not considered to be in violation of the Fifteenth Amendment, because they made literacy, not race, the reason that voting was being restricted.
Another way that African Americans were kept out of the voting booth was by the so-called "Grandfather clause." There were many varieties of this kind oflaw, which said that people who had been voting before a certain date--or whose grandfathers had been voting before that date--did not have to register; they were simply allowed to vote. That way, registration rules could be made very complicated, or voter registration could be limited to a short, inconvenient time. If the voting date was set back far enough, it would exclude virtually all black voters, who had only been given the right to vote in 1869.
Oklahoma's Grandfather Clause
When Oklahoma was admitted into the Union in 1908, there was no Grandfather clause in its constitution. Almost immediately, however, this Southern state amended its constitution to read in part
In other words, someone who had only recently become a United States citizen,or someone whose grandfather had been voting in 1866, would be allowed to vote in Oklahoma. But someone who had not begun to vote until 1869--the year the Fifteenth Amendment was passed--would have to take a literacy test in orderto cast a ballot.
The net effect of this provision was that voting in Oklahoma was a virtuallyall-white affair. This angered U.S. Attorney John Embry, who, along with fellow U.S. Attorney William R. Gregg wanted to bring Oklahoma elections officials up on criminal charges for the violent and discriminatory atmosphere of the1910 elections. As J. A. Harris, Chair of the Oklahoma Republic Committee complained to the Attorney General, "Election inspectors had received orders topermit no man to vote who was colored, and the orders were carried out in practically all portions of the State." Black citizens of Oklahoma also complained to both President William H. Taft and the Justice Department, citing theenormous amount of racial violence, including at least one lynching, all of which served to discourage black voters.
President Taft was a Republican, which was still thought of as "Abraham Lincoln's party," as opposed to the Southern Democrats, who were considered anti-black. Yet Taft wanted to reach out to white Southern voters, and he was reluctant to tell his Justice Department to prosecute. Nevertheless, Embry went ahead, and two Oklahoma state elections officials, J. J. Beal and Frank Guinn,were indicted. The charges against them were from the Criminal Code, which in1866 and 1870 had been amended to make it criminal to deprive someone of hisor her rights under Constitution and federal law.
No one expected an Oklahoma jury to convict two state officials of civil rights violations, particularly when the officials had been enforcing an amendment to the Oklahoma state constitution. Yet on 29 September 1911, the two men were convicted in the District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma before Judge John H. Cotteral. The judge had told the jury that if the two men had simply made a mistake in how they enforced the law, then they had not committed a crime and should not be found guilty. The judge stated, on the other hand, that:
A Political Decision
Meanwhile, the 1912 presidential election was approaching. The Republican Taft was running against two candidates. Progressive Party candidate Theodore Roosevelt had excluded black people entirely from his strategy, and Democrat Woodrow Wilson was a Southerner. Taft suddenly saw good reason to appeal to black voters, and his Justice Department passed the word--any Oklahoma officialswho did not let black people vote under the Grandfather clause would be prosecuted.
Oklahoma Governor Lee Cruce was furious. He insisted that the law be enforced. "I am tired of these cheap little partisan Deputy Marshals trying continually to interfere with the administration of laws in this state," he said. Cruce even threatened to arrest any federal agent who interfered with Oklahoma'selections.
Rumors spread, however, that federal authorities were also to arrest lawbreakers-that is, any election official who kept a black person from voting. In fact, U.S. Attorney Homer N. Boardman did go on to prosecute the chairman and the secretary of the Blaine County Election Board in a case that became knownas United States v. Moseley, Guinn, Moseley. These two cases, along with a third case, Myers v. Anderson, together were known as the "Grandfather clause cases."
The Supreme Court Decides
Taft lost the 1912 election to Woodrow Wilson. Despite the fact that Wilson was a Democrat and a Southerner, many civil rights leaders saw him as their best hope. But would he agree with the United States' position in the case of Guinn and Beal? These two officials had turned to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, claiming that they should not be prosecuted for upholding the law of their state. The Eight Circuit, in turn, sent the matter to theSupreme Court. At this point, the Justice Department had the option of backing down. It was under no obligation to carry on the case.
It is hard to know why the Wilson administration went ahead with Guinn v.United States. On one hand, Wilson had made a campaign promise to deal fairly with black people, and such leaders as W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington had supported him. On the other hand, as soon as he got into office,his administration began to segregate government cafeterias, to divide blackand white employees at the Treasury and Post Office Departments, and even toscreen off the desks of black civil servants. Despite the fact that the civil service had been integrated for 50 years, Wilson chose to segregate it.
Perhaps that was all the more reason for Wilson to proceed with Guinn.He may have thought he needed some way to win black political support. Perhaps he genuinely thought he was being even-handed. It is possible that the Guinn case simply fell through the cracks, a bureaucratic leftover from aprevious administration that no one took the trouble to re-decide. In any case, the Grandfather clause case went to court.
The Supreme Court took over a year and a half to decide on Guinn v. UnitedStates. Unanimously (Justice McReynolds took no part), the Court ruled that the Oklahoma law was in violation of the Fifteenth Amendment. The rulingspecified that literacy tests per se were not unconstitutional. But inthis case, the literacy test was so intertwined with the Grandfather clausethat it clearly had no purpose except to keep black people from voting. Therefore, it was unconstitutional.
Civil Rights and Wrongs
The Supreme Court decision was greeted with joy by those who supported civilrights. One of the historic features of the case was the participation of theNational Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), who hadsubmitted a "friend of the court" brief through Moorfield Storey. He and hisNAACP colleagues stated that the decision "was a very great victory . . . a great step in advance [indicating] that the Court has waked up to the situation."
Yet finally, neither the Guinn decision nor the other two Grandfatherclause cases had much practical impact. A special session of the 1916 Oklahoma legislature enacted a new law that "grandfathered" in all those who had registered in the 1914 election. This blatant defiance of the Court's intentionwent unpunished for years. Not until 1939 did the Court strike down the Oklahoma law. It wasn't until 1965, when the Voting Rights Act was passed by Congress, that African American voting rights truly become established throughoutthe United States.
Related Cases
Frank Guinn, J. J. Beal
Defendant
United States
Plaintiffs' Claim
That the federal government had been wrong to prosecute these two Oklahoma election officials for enforcing an Oklahoma voting regulation that became known as the "Grandfather clause." The government believed that the "Grandfatherclause" deprived African Americans of their right to vote.
Chief Defense Lawyers
James C. McReynolds, U.S. Attorney General; John W. Davis, U.S. Solicitor General
Chief Lawyer for Plaintiff
Joseph W. Bailey
Justices for the Court
William Rufus Day, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Charles Evans Hughes, Joseph RuckerLamar, Joseph McKenna, Mahlon Pitney, Willis Van Devanter, Edward Douglass White (writing for the Court)
Justices Dissenting
None (James Clark McReynolds did not participate)
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
21 June 1915
Decision
That the Oklahoma voting regulation did in fact violate the Fifteenth Amendment and unconstitutionally deprive African Americans of their right to vote.
Significance
A unanimous Supreme Court had for the first time struck down a state law disenfranchising African Americans; however, Oklahoma almost immediately found another way to continue discriminating against black voters and the federal government took no action, leaving black Americans effectively disenfranchised in much of the nation until the voting rights movement of the 1960s.
The story of African American voting rights begins with the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment soon after the end of the Civil War. The Fifteenth Amendment was very simple. It had only two sentences:
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the UnitedStates or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
For a while, during the period known as Reconstruction, the Fifteenth Amendment was actually enforced. Federal troops occupied the states of the former Confederacy to make sure that black Americans had the right to vote. But when federal troops were withdrawn in 1873, Southern states found many ways to makevoting a whites-only endeavor. In addition to outright terrorism by groups like the Ku Klux Klan, many states sought to prevent black voting by a systemof laws and rules.
One of the best-known ways of restricting voting was the "literacy test." Being able to read, for example, a part of the state constitution might be madea requirement for voting. In those times, many people, both black and white,could not read or could not read well. A registrar might ask a white voter toread only a simple word or sentence, or might coach or help him, whereas a black voter might be asked to read a long, complicated passage. Technically, literacy tests were not considered to be in violation of the Fifteenth Amendment, because they made literacy, not race, the reason that voting was being restricted.
Another way that African Americans were kept out of the voting booth was by the so-called "Grandfather clause." There were many varieties of this kind oflaw, which said that people who had been voting before a certain date--or whose grandfathers had been voting before that date--did not have to register; they were simply allowed to vote. That way, registration rules could be made very complicated, or voter registration could be limited to a short, inconvenient time. If the voting date was set back far enough, it would exclude virtually all black voters, who had only been given the right to vote in 1869.
Oklahoma's Grandfather Clause
When Oklahoma was admitted into the Union in 1908, there was no Grandfather clause in its constitution. Almost immediately, however, this Southern state amended its constitution to read in part
no person shall be registered . . . or allowed to vote, unless he be able to read and write any section of the [state] constitution . . . no person who was, on January 1, 1866, orat any time prior thereto, under any form of government, or who at that timeresided in some foreign nation, and no lineal descendant of such person shall be denied the right to vote because of his inability to read and write sections [of the state constitution.]
In other words, someone who had only recently become a United States citizen,or someone whose grandfather had been voting in 1866, would be allowed to vote in Oklahoma. But someone who had not begun to vote until 1869--the year the Fifteenth Amendment was passed--would have to take a literacy test in orderto cast a ballot.
The net effect of this provision was that voting in Oklahoma was a virtuallyall-white affair. This angered U.S. Attorney John Embry, who, along with fellow U.S. Attorney William R. Gregg wanted to bring Oklahoma elections officials up on criminal charges for the violent and discriminatory atmosphere of the1910 elections. As J. A. Harris, Chair of the Oklahoma Republic Committee complained to the Attorney General, "Election inspectors had received orders topermit no man to vote who was colored, and the orders were carried out in practically all portions of the State." Black citizens of Oklahoma also complained to both President William H. Taft and the Justice Department, citing theenormous amount of racial violence, including at least one lynching, all of which served to discourage black voters.
President Taft was a Republican, which was still thought of as "Abraham Lincoln's party," as opposed to the Southern Democrats, who were considered anti-black. Yet Taft wanted to reach out to white Southern voters, and he was reluctant to tell his Justice Department to prosecute. Nevertheless, Embry went ahead, and two Oklahoma state elections officials, J. J. Beal and Frank Guinn,were indicted. The charges against them were from the Criminal Code, which in1866 and 1870 had been amended to make it criminal to deprive someone of hisor her rights under Constitution and federal law.
No one expected an Oklahoma jury to convict two state officials of civil rights violations, particularly when the officials had been enforcing an amendment to the Oklahoma state constitution. Yet on 29 September 1911, the two men were convicted in the District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma before Judge John H. Cotteral. The judge had told the jury that if the two men had simply made a mistake in how they enforced the law, then they had not committed a crime and should not be found guilty. The judge stated, on the other hand, that:
if they knew or believed those colored persons were entitled to vote and their purpose was to unfairly and fraudulently deny the right of suffrage to them . . . on account of their race and color, then their purpose was a corrupt one, and they cannot be shielded by their official positions.
A Political Decision
Meanwhile, the 1912 presidential election was approaching. The Republican Taft was running against two candidates. Progressive Party candidate Theodore Roosevelt had excluded black people entirely from his strategy, and Democrat Woodrow Wilson was a Southerner. Taft suddenly saw good reason to appeal to black voters, and his Justice Department passed the word--any Oklahoma officialswho did not let black people vote under the Grandfather clause would be prosecuted.
Oklahoma Governor Lee Cruce was furious. He insisted that the law be enforced. "I am tired of these cheap little partisan Deputy Marshals trying continually to interfere with the administration of laws in this state," he said. Cruce even threatened to arrest any federal agent who interfered with Oklahoma'selections.
Rumors spread, however, that federal authorities were also to arrest lawbreakers-that is, any election official who kept a black person from voting. In fact, U.S. Attorney Homer N. Boardman did go on to prosecute the chairman and the secretary of the Blaine County Election Board in a case that became knownas United States v. Moseley, Guinn, Moseley. These two cases, along with a third case, Myers v. Anderson, together were known as the "Grandfather clause cases."
The Supreme Court Decides
Taft lost the 1912 election to Woodrow Wilson. Despite the fact that Wilson was a Democrat and a Southerner, many civil rights leaders saw him as their best hope. But would he agree with the United States' position in the case of Guinn and Beal? These two officials had turned to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, claiming that they should not be prosecuted for upholding the law of their state. The Eight Circuit, in turn, sent the matter to theSupreme Court. At this point, the Justice Department had the option of backing down. It was under no obligation to carry on the case.
It is hard to know why the Wilson administration went ahead with Guinn v.United States. On one hand, Wilson had made a campaign promise to deal fairly with black people, and such leaders as W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington had supported him. On the other hand, as soon as he got into office,his administration began to segregate government cafeterias, to divide blackand white employees at the Treasury and Post Office Departments, and even toscreen off the desks of black civil servants. Despite the fact that the civil service had been integrated for 50 years, Wilson chose to segregate it.
Perhaps that was all the more reason for Wilson to proceed with Guinn.He may have thought he needed some way to win black political support. Perhaps he genuinely thought he was being even-handed. It is possible that the Guinn case simply fell through the cracks, a bureaucratic leftover from aprevious administration that no one took the trouble to re-decide. In any case, the Grandfather clause case went to court.
The Supreme Court took over a year and a half to decide on Guinn v. UnitedStates. Unanimously (Justice McReynolds took no part), the Court ruled that the Oklahoma law was in violation of the Fifteenth Amendment. The rulingspecified that literacy tests per se were not unconstitutional. But inthis case, the literacy test was so intertwined with the Grandfather clausethat it clearly had no purpose except to keep black people from voting. Therefore, it was unconstitutional.
Civil Rights and Wrongs
The Supreme Court decision was greeted with joy by those who supported civilrights. One of the historic features of the case was the participation of theNational Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), who hadsubmitted a "friend of the court" brief through Moorfield Storey. He and hisNAACP colleagues stated that the decision "was a very great victory . . . a great step in advance [indicating] that the Court has waked up to the situation."
Yet finally, neither the Guinn decision nor the other two Grandfatherclause cases had much practical impact. A special session of the 1916 Oklahoma legislature enacted a new law that "grandfathered" in all those who had registered in the 1914 election. This blatant defiance of the Court's intentionwent unpunished for years. Not until 1939 did the Court strike down the Oklahoma law. It wasn't until 1965, when the Voting Rights Act was passed by Congress, that African American voting rights truly become established throughoutthe United States.
Related Cases
- United States v. Classic, 313 U.S. 299 (1941).
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