County No. 2, 21,000 white people, 4,000 Negroes: “... we have never known of a Negro juror in ... county.”
County No. 3, 28,000 white people, 4,700 Negroes: “Negroes never have this burden heaped upon them in this State.”
County No. 4, 540,000 white people, 35,500 Negroes: “We do not have many Negro jurors. I have occupied this post but six months, and in that time we have had but two Negroes called for service. Our jury canvass is made biennially. All names placed in the wheel are taken just as drawn from the same on orders from the various divisions of court. A few of the more intelligent Negroes are placed on the jury list. I made inquiry when two Negroes served on a jury last week. The other jurors did not seem to feel any antipathy. Of course, a little surprise was manifested at seeing them in court when their names were called. Neither the attorneys for the plaintiff nor [for] the defence challenged them but accepted them on the jury. My predecessors never placed many of the Negroes’ names in the wheel as I understand from them.” This letter was from the jury commissioner, not the clerk of the court.
_North Carolina._—County No. 1, 6,800 white people, 8,000 Negroes: “... of late years very few Negroes serve on the juries in this county for the reasons that they are an illiterate race and moral character not what it should be. Further, he is easily influenced, deciding with a juror whom he may like instead of weighing the evidence and deciding accordingly. The number of Negro jurors has decreased for the past few years on account of the Negro of to-day [being] morally not as good as the Negro of several years ago.”
County No. 2, 11,000 white people, 19,000 Negroes: “I will say that Negroes do not serve on the jury in this county and have not since we, the white people, got the government in our hands. When the Republican party was in power Negroes were drawn, both regular and talis jurors, and not one out of one hundred was a competent juror, but, strange to say, when a Negro was on trial, he would always prefer the white men to try his case.”
County No. 3, 5,800 white people, 8,300 Negroes: “Negroes occasionally serve on juries in ... county, but not to as great extent as they did before the passage of the Amendment [the suffrage amendment in 1900]. The County Commissioners have been more particular about the names that are left in the box from which jurors are drawn. Only the best, most reliable and most intelligent Negroes are left in the box. Sometimes it happens that a few are called as talismen, but not then until the sheriff has exhausted his best efforts to get white men. Those called are very apt to be good, reliable men, and with a majority of white men in the jury-box are not disposed or able to do wrong. My experience as clerk for 20 years is that they make good jurors, and are apt to be disposed, in criminal actions, to execute the law even against their own race. Judge ... says that white men on the jury are everywhere disposed to lean toward a Negro litigant, especially if the Negro is of the old-class, before-the-war Negro gentleman and the white man is of these later days ‘common trash.’ I am told by the judges that in some counties the sheriffs would not dare to call a Negro as a talisman even, but, as I have said, we have them not very frequently and without complaint. I notice that the opposing lawyers are slow in challenging them when so called....”