Details:

John Embry, United States Department of Justice Attorney, draft of a letter sent to relating to African-American voter suppression by election officers in Oklahoma. 2-pages.

Overall toning and age wear including tears to edges and corners. A scarce document from this turbulent time in American history which lead to the landmark case Frank Guinn and J. J. Beal v. United States.

Frank Guinn and J. J. Beal v. United States, 238 U.S. 347 (1915), was a United States Supreme Court decision that found certain grandfather clause exemptions to literacy tests for voting rights to be unconstitutional. Though these grandfather clauses were superficially race-neutral, they were designed to protect the voting rights of illiterate white voters while disenfranchising black voters.

The 1870 ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution barred each state from denying the right to vote on the basis of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude". In response, several Southern states, including Oklahoma, established constitutional provisions designed to effectively disenfranchise American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS) voters without explicitly violating the Fifteenth Amendment. In his majority opinion, Chief Justice Edward Douglass White held that Oklahoma's grandfather clause was "repugnant to the Fifteenth Amendment and therefore null and void". The decision had little immediate impact, as Southern legislatures found other methods to disenfranchise ADOS.

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Includes a full letter of authenticity from JG Autographs, Inc.

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Reference sku: 11182 1393058-1