kept off the jury consciously by State officials because of their race, color, or previous condition.[48] The Fourteenth Amendment is violated, however, when the officers of the State keep Negroes off the juries for these causes. The Supreme Court[49] of the United States said in 1899: "Whenever by an action of a State, whether through its legislature, through its courts, or through its executive or administrative officers, all persons of the African race are excluded, solely because of their race or color, from serving as grand jurors in the criminal prosecution of a person of the African race, the equal protection of the laws is denied to him contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States."
A custom seems to have grown up among some lawyers, particularly in the South, to move to quash the indictment whenever a Negro is on trial for a crime and there are no Negroes on the grand jury. With almost absolute uniformity, the State courts have held that there is no ground for quashing the indictment unless it is shown that Negroes were kept off the juries purposely and because of their race or color.[50] The cases show also that, if a Negro is kept off the grand jury because of his race, there is ground for quashing the indictment. Texas has furnished far more of these jury cases than any other Southern State. Wherever the jury commissioners have betrayed in any way the fact that they kept Negroes off the juries because of their race, the indictment has been quashed. A few instances will suffice. In one case the commissioners said that they did not put Negroes on the jury because they considered them unfit; this was held[51] to be in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. When, again, they said
