[61] 127 U. S., 731.
[62] 179 U. S., 58.
[63] 185 U. S.
[64] 189 U. S., 475.
[65] 193 U. S., 146.
[66] The Constitution of Mississippi prescribing the qualifications for electors conferred upon the legislature the power to enact laws to carry those provisions into effect. Ability to read any section of the Constitution or to understand it when read was made a qualification necessary to a legal voter. Another provision made the qualifications for grand or petit jurors that they should be able to read and write. Upon the complaint of Negroes thus disabled the court held that these provisions do not on their face discriminate between white and Negro races and do not amount to a denial of the equal protection of the law secured by the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. It had not been shown that their actual administration was evil, but that only evil was possible under them.
In Washington County, Mississippi, Williams had been indicted for murder by a grand jury composed of white men altogether. He moved that the indictment be quashed because the law by which the grand jury was established was unconstitutional. (Williams v. Mississippi.)
[67] 193 U. S., 621.
[68] 238 U. S., 347.
[69] Ibid., 368.