County No. 3, 5,000 white people, 27,000 Negroes: “Negroes do not serve on juries in our courts. Such a state of affairs would be considered by the people of this county as farcical. The Lord defend us from having jurors of a race of people who are absolutely without regard for an oath.”
Arkansas.—County No. 1, 1,800 white people, 12,600 Negroes: “No Negroes serve in this county on regular juries. Sometimes when hard to obtain white jurors, a few Negroes may be taken in cases in J. P. Courts, but not often. Even this habit is smaller than formerly, falling off every year. Colored jurors [are] not looked upon as intelligent, and very few as honest and possessing integrity, and they, as a rule, are also uneducated.”
County No. 2, 14,000 white people, 29,800 Negroes: “No Negroes have served on juries in the court of this county since 1894. Prior to that time it was a common thing for them to be in the majority. I believe the Negroes are fairly well pleased with the verdicts of all white jurors, as the question is nearly always propounded to the juror, when it is a Negro defendant: ‘Would you give the defendant the same consideration as if he was a white man?’”
Florida.—County No. 1, 17,000 white people, 22,000 Negroes: “It has been many years since a Negro sat upon a jury in this court, and the probability is, it will be many more. Negroes are not regarded as good jurors, and I believe it to be a fact that a Negro would prefer being tried by a white jury than a mixed jury, or a jury composed wholly of Negroes; this applies to both civil and criminal matters.”
County No. 2, 11,000 white people, 12,000 Negroes: “Negroes do not sit on the jury in this county, and have not since the days of ‘Carpet-Bag Rule.’ I do not think a county in this State permits a Negro juryman.”
County No. 3, 6,000 white people, 8,000 Negroes: “Negro jurymen or other officers are a thing of the past in our county and State. The oldest person can hardly recall the time when we had such in our county, with the exception of a very few years just after the war.”
County No. 4, 9,000 white people, 15,000 Negroes: “... in the circuit court of the State it is very seldom that a Negro serves on the jury. Negroes, as a rule, are not good jurors, for the reason that they are usually very ignorant and can be easily influenced by others in the rendering of their verdict. The Negro jurors, so far as the State courts are concerned, are almost eliminated. In the Federal courts of the State, a large number of Negroes serve on the juries....”
County No. 5, 2,300 white people, 2,700 Negroes: “The laws of this State require that the county commissioners select not less than 290 nor more than 310 ‘persons of approved integrity, fair character, sound judgment and intelligence’ to serve as jurors. Therefore, because most of the elder Negroes are illiterate and because most of the younger ones that remain here are of other than fair character, there are but few Negroes, about one per cent., whose names are drawn or selected to go into the jury-box. If one is drawn as juror ... he serves as such juror, and no one has ever objected to one so far as I know of. My experience covers a period of ten years, during which time ... we have had only two Negroes drawn as jurors. No person has ever appealed a case on account of not having a Negro on the jury, nor has there been anything said outside on account of the practical elimination of the Negro from jury duty.”
Georgia.—County No. 1, 5,000 white people, 24,000 Negroes: “No Negroes serve on our jury. There are no Negro names in the jury-box.”
County No. 2, 5,900 white people, 6,800 Negroes: “No Negroes have ever been placed in the jury-box in this county. They are not regarded as competent or reliable as jurors, hence they have not [been] tried as such in this county.”