Miller v. Lucks
| Decision Date | 14 June 1948 |
| Docket Number | 36709. |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
| Parties | MILLER v. LUCKS et al. |
Jackson, Young, Daniel & Mitchell, of Jackson for appellant.
Creekmore & Creekmore and Howie, Howie & McGowan, all of Jackson, for appellee.
The appellees filed a petition in the court below seeking to be declared sole heirs at law of Pearl Mitchell Miller, a Negro woman who died in Chicago, Illinois, intestate as to property owned by her in Mississippi described in the petition. Pearl Mitchell Miller left no heirs at law other than the appellees, except her husband, Alex D. Miller, a white man to whom she was legally married in the State of Illinois. Alex Miller appeared and by an answer and cross-bill asserted that he was the sole heir at law of Pearl Mitchell Miller and that the appellees or some of them have been in possession of the property receiving and appropriating rents therefrom, and prayed that he be declared the sole heir at law of Pearl Mitchell Miller and for an accounting from the appellees for the rents received by them from the property. The final decree granted the prayer of the appellees and dismissed the cross-bill of the appellant.
It appears from the record that Pearl Mitchell and Alex D Miller was citizens of the State of Mississippi in and prior to November, 1923, when they were indicted in the Circuit Court of the First Judicial District of Hinds County for unlawful cohabitation, but that the case was nol prossed by the District Attorney on the agreement of Pearl to leave the state, which she did, moving to Chicago, Illinois, in December, 1923, as did Alex Miller in January, 1924, where they lived continuously until Pearl's death in September, 1945, and where Alex Miller still lives. In July, 1939, after they had become citizens of the State of Illinois and owed no allegiance to the State of Mississippi, they were legally married in Chicago, according to the law of Illinois, and thereafter lived together as husband and wife. No children were born of this marriage.
Section 263 of our State Constitution provides that 'the marriage of a white person with a negro or mulatto, or person who shall have one-eighth or more of negro blood, shall be unlawful and void.'
Section 459, Code of 1942, provides that 'the marriage of a white person and a negro or mulatto or person who shall have one-eighth or more of negro blood * * * shall be unlawful, and such marriage shall be unlawful and void; and any party thereto, on conviction, shall be punished as for marriage within the degrees prohibited by the last two sections; and any attempt to evade this and the two preceding sections by marrying out of this state and returning to it shall be within them.'
These sections of the Constitution and Statute, of course, have no extra-territorial effect and this marriage being valid in Illinois, where contracted, must be recognized and given effect as such...
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