State v. Jackson

• Decision Date: 31 October 1883
• Citation: 80 Mo. 175
• Parties: THE STATE, Appellant, v. JACKSON.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

80 Mo. 175

THE STATE, Appellant,

v.JACKSON.

Supreme Court of Missouri.

October Term, 1883.

Appeal from Cape Girardeau Circuit Court.--HON. D. L. HAWKINS, Judge.

REVERSED.

D. H. McIntyre, Attorney General, for the State.

B. H. Whitelaw for respondent.

HENRY, J.

At the May term, 1880, of the circuit court of Cape Girardeau county, the defendant, a white woman, was indicted for having intermarried with Dennis Jackson, a person having more than one-eighth part of negro blood. A demurrer was sustained on the ground that the law on which the indictment was based, section 1540, Revised Statutes 1879, is in conflict with the 14th amendment of the Constitution of the United States, as also with the 17th subdivision of section 53 of article 4 of the constitution of this State.

Section 1540, Revised Statutes 1879, is as follows: “No person having one-eighth part or more of negro blood shall be permitted to marry any white person, nor shall any white person be permitted to marry any negro or person having one-eighth part or more of negro blood; and every person who shall knowingly marry in violation of the provisions of this section, shall, upon conviction, be punished by imprisonment in the penitentiary for two years, or by fine not less than $100, or by imprisonment in the county jail not less than three months, or by both such fine and imprisonment; and the jury trying any such case may determine the proportion of negro blood in any party to such marriage from the appearance of such person.”

We are unable to perceive any conflict between that section and the clause of our State constitution which declares that: “The general assembly shall not pass any local or special law regulating the practice or jurisdiction of or changing the rules of evidence in any judicial proceeding or inquiry before courts * * .” It did not change the practice or jurisdiction or rules of evidence in any judicial proceeding or inquiry before any judicial tribunal. Besides, it is not a special or local but a general law, embracing all citizens of this State, white as well as black.

It may interfere with the taste of negroes who want to marry whites, or whites who wish to intermarry with negroes, but the State has the same right to regulate marriages in this respect that it has to forbid the intermarriage of cousins and other blood relations. If the State desires to preserve the purity of the African blood by prohibiting intermarriages between whites and blacks, we know of no power on earth to prevent such legislation. It is a matter of purely domestic concern. The 14th amendment to the Constitution of the United States, to which, by some, magical power is ascribed, has no such scope as seems to have been accorded to it by the circuit court. It declares that: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the state where they reside;” and that: “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.”

Every Chinaman, Indian and Hottentot born in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction, is, under the definition of a citizen, contained in the 1st section of the amendment, a citizen of the United States; and under the general, sweeping declarations of the latter clause of that section it is necessary to determine what are the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States. They are those secured to them by the Constitution of the United States and laws enacted in pursuance thereof. All of one's rights as a citizen of the United States will be found guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States. If any provision of that instrument confers upon a citizen the right to marry any one who is willing to wed him, our attention has not been called to it. If such be one of the rights attached to American citizenship all our marriage acts forbidding intermarriages between persons within certain degrees of consanguinity are void, and the nephew may marry his aunt, the niece her uncle, and the son his mother or grandmother.

The act in question is not open to the objection that it discriminates against the colored race, because it equally forbids white persons from intermarrying with negroes, and prescribes the same punishment for violations of its...