- ing. At present, a statute[60] specially provides for the
naturalization of aliens of African nativity and persons of African descent, requiring that the same rules shall apply to them as to free white persons.
The only case that has been found involving the citizenship of a Negro arose in Michigan in 1872.[61] A Negro, born in Canada of parents who had been slaves in Virginia but who had gone to Canada in 1834, went to Michigan at the age of twenty. The question was whether he was a citizen of the United States and, so, entitled to registration as a voter. The Supreme Court of the State held that, when his parents went to Canada, they were no longer under the jurisdiction of this country. The son was not born of citizens of the United States, nor was he born under the jurisdiction of the United States, and, therefore, was not a citizen of the United States.
The citizenship requirement in the Southern States is essentially the same as that in other States and cannot be said, in any way, to involve a race distinction.
Age
In all of the States and organized Territories an elector must be twenty-one years of age or over. In the Philippines the age limit is twenty-three. There seems to be no possible race distinction in the age requirement. It may be that, because of the less careful record of dates of birth among Negroes, more of that race are unable to prove that they are twenty-one years old; but this is only a question of evidence.
