IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES. DECEMBER TERM, 1870. JOHN BLYEW AND GEORGE KENNARD, VS. THE UNITED STATES. NO. 205. IN ERROR TO THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES FOR THE DISTRICT OF KENTUCKY. BRIEF OF THE UNITED STATES.
[Washington? 1870]. Caption title, as issued. 40pp. Text clean, bound in modern plain wrappers. Very Good. Signed in type at the end by B. H. Bristow, Solicitor General of the United States.
This case demonstrates the Supreme Court's grudging recognition of -- indeed, its reluctance to implement -- the Reconstruction Congress's efforts to provide black citizens with equal treatment under the law. Blyew and Kennard, adult "white persons," were convicted in a Kentucky federal court for having murdered Lucy Armstrong, an elderly "citizen of the United States of America, of the African race." The case was open-and-shut, the murder having been witnessed by several American citizens "of the African race." They heard Kennard declare, "in presence of Blyew, 'that he [Kennard] thought there would soon be another war about the niggers; that when it did come, he intended to go to killing niggers, and he was not sure that he would not begin his work of killing them before the war should actually commence'."
Under the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the seminal Reconstruction statute and the predecessor of the Fourteenth Amendment, trial occurred in a federal rather than in a Kentucky State Court: Under State law, "colored persons were denied the right to 'give evidence' against white persons." This, the United States argued, was sufficient to bring the case into a federal court, where the entire case could be heard, with witnesses regardless of race. Astonishingly, the Supreme Court disagreed. Its opinion is recorded at 80 U. S. 581 [1871]. Item #41273
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