or previous condition of servitude, and any officer or other person charged with any duty in the selection or summoning of jurors who shall exclude or fail to summon any citizen for the cause aforesaid shall, upon conviction thereof, be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and be fined not more than five thousand dollars." As was seen in the previous chapter on the civil rights of Negroes, the first sections of the Civil Rights Bill were declared unconstitutional in 1883. But, as will be seen in the discussion of the cases that have arisen about the Negro as a juror, the section quoted above has stood the test of constitutionality and is still a part of our Federal statute law.
When the States outside the South saw, in 1883, that the Federal Government was impotent to secure civil rights to Negroes, they began to enact Civil Rights Bills of their own, which virtually copied the Federal statutes of 1875. The following States enacted statutes practically the same as the Federal law referring to jury service: Indiana,[36] in 1885; Michigan,[37] in 1885; New York,[38] in 1895; Ohio,[39] in 1884, and Rhode Island,[40] in 1885. The only difference between these State statutes and the Federal statute is in the punishment for keeping a person off the jury because of his race or color. Indiana and Michigan impose a fine of not less than one hundred dollars or imprisonment of not more than thirty days, or both; New York imposes a fine of from one hundred dollars to five hundred dollars or imprisonment from thirty to ninety days, or both; Ohio imposes a fine from fifty dollars to five hundred dollars or imprisonment between thirty and ninety days, or both; Rhode Island imposes a fine not to exceed one hundred dollars. This is practically all of
