Montana Labor News

SCOTTSBORO CASE WINS
RIGHTS FOR NEGROES

CHARLOTTE, N. C.-(FP)-Civil rights belonging to Negroes under the U. S. constitution but never before granted them in the south are now being yielded in North Carolina. This is a direct result of the Scottsboro case. Throughout this state Negroes are currently being drawn for jury panels and actual jury service.

For the first time since Reconstruction days a Negro is serving on a McDowell County superior court jury at Marion. A number of Negro names had been placed in the jury box after Judge J. H. Clement directed McDowell commissioners to do so. This action, it is admitted, was taken because of last year's ruling in the Scottsboro case by the U. S. Supreme Court, which requires names of eligible Negroes to be placed on the jury rolls.

In May of this year a Negro served on a jury in Gastonia, sitting on 15 divorce cases in a 2-week civil court term. This was the first time a Negro ever saw jury service in Gaston county.

In Charlotte, largest city of the Carolinas, two Negro jurors have just been chosen to serve at seven weeks of Mecklenburg county superior court. A new county jury list is at present being compiled in Charlotte. For the first time in history, all names, whether white or Negro, will appear without any designation as to color. Hitherto names of whites had been written in black ink and names of Negroes in red ink.