Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303 (1879)

"The Fourteenth Amendment was designed to assure to a race recently emancipated,
all the civil rights that under the law are enjoyed by white persons."

John Bingham drafted the 14th Amendment

West Virginia, 1874. Under state law, all jurors must be white. A black man, Taylor Strauder, is sentenced to be hanged for murder. He appeals, challenging the state's whites-only jury law.

In 1879, the Supreme Court reverses his conviction. Justice Strong cites the newly passed Fourteenth Amendment: "It was designed to assure to a race recently emancipated, a race that through many generations had been held in slavery, all the civil rights that under the law are enjoyed by white persons. It not only gave citizenship and the privileges of citizenship to persons of color, but it denied to any State the power to withhold from them the equal protection of the laws."

For more...

John Bingham Impeach Andrew Johnson

The Taylor Strauder Case West Virginia History Center

AMENDMENT 14 Due Process and Equal Protection of the Law

Passed by Congress June 13, 1866. Ratified July 9, 1868.

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. [^].

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