Graystar,
The USSC in Cruikshank wasn't saying that the defendants should have gone to state court first. They were saying they could NEVER be dragged into a Federal court. If there was a "state court first" requirement, then the state of Louisiana could deliberately fail to so prosecute them, and hence leave the murderers free forever.
Which is exactly what happened. Study the entire history of Southern lynchings. Murder became a
state supported activity after the Cruikshank decision.
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There are "2805 [documented] victims of lynch mobs killed between 1882 and 1930 in ten southern states. Although mobs murdered almost 300 white men and women, the vast majority (almost 2,500) of lynch victims were African-American. Of these black victims, 94 percent died in the hands of white lynch mobs. The scale of this carnage means that, on the average, a black man, woman, or child was murdered nearly once a week, every week, between 1882 and 1930 by a hate-driven white mob" (ix).
Source:
http://www.umass.edu/complit/aclanet/ACLAText/USLynch.html
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Cruikshank caused this. Do you still support Cruikshank?
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Source:
http://www.musarium.com/withoutsanctuary/main.html - click on pictures. That's one of
over eighty. That particular one is dated and documented: "The lynching of Dick Robinson and a man named Thompson. October 6, 1906, Pritchard Station, Alabama."
When you look through those pictures, understand that most were POSTCARDS. GODDAMNIT, THOSE PEOPLE IN THE LYNCH MOBS HAD SO LITTLE FEAR OF PROSECUTION, THEY SMILED FOR THE CAMERA KNOWING THE PICTURES WOULD BE SPREAD TO HELL AND GONE!!!
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Cruikshank caused this. Do you still support Cruikshank?
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CONSIDER THE FACTS.
During six weeks of the months of March and April just past, twelve colored men were lynched in Georgia, the reign of outlawry culminating in the torture and hanging of the colored preacher, Elijah Strickland, and the burning alive of Samuel Wilkes, alias Hose, Sunday, April 23, 1899.
The real purpose of these savage demonstrations is to teach the Negro that in the South he has no rights that the law will enforce. Samuel Hose was burned to teach the Negroes that no matter what a white man does to them, they must not resist. Hose, a servant, had killed Cranford, his employer. An example must be made. Ordinary punishment was deemed inadequate. This Negro must be burned alive. To make the burning a certainty the charge of outrage was invented, and added to the charge of murder. The daily press offered reward for the capture of Hose and then openly incited the people to burn him as soon as caught. The mob carried out the plan in every savage detail.
Of the twelve men lynched during that reign of unspeakable barbarism, only one was even charged with an assault upon a woman. Yet Southern apologists justify their savagery on the ground that Negroes are lynched only because of their crimes against women.
The Southern press champions burning men alive, and says, "Consider the facts." The colored people join issue and also say,, "Consider the fact." The colored people of Chicago employed a detective to go to Georgia, and his report in this pamphlet gives the facts. We give here the details of the lynching as they were reported in the Southern papers, then follows the report of the true facts as to the cause of the lynchings, as learned by the investigation. We submit all to the sober judgment of the Nation, confident that, in this cause, as well as all others, "Truth is mighty and will prevail."
IDA B. WELLS-BARNETT.
2939 Princeton Avenue, Chicago, June 20, 1899.
Source:
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/murray:@field(FLD001+91898209+)
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Cruikshank caused this. Do you still support Cruikshank?
I could go on like this for days. Hit google and do a search on the terms:
black history lynchings
Look, do you even understand that the state of Louisiana *approved* of the actions of Cruikshank and the other rioters? Do you realize that the Southern states fought black civil rights and black voting at every turn?
Quoting Graystar:
The concept of the federal government being directly responsible for the protection of our rights would create a national police force. This was not the intention of the 14th amendment.
The hell it wasn't! The North had just finished sending in HOW many million *troops* to the South? Jesus, they burned Atlanta to the ground. You think John Bingham would have balked over sending some cops down there?
Are you familiar with the Freedmen's Bureau act? In 1866, it created a team of Federal cops with police powers to protect black civil rights and safety in the south! That was the first "national police force", two years BEFORE the 14th.
Again, your ignorance of these times is just breathtaking.
Your two cites to Dred Scott only further illustrate how that court used terms like "special rights and immunities" and "privileges and immunities" and plain old "rights" interchangably. What matters is that all of these rights are what are protected for you as a US citizen. Read the chunk I quoted again, and the meaning of the term "privileges and immunities" is specifically defined to include the RKBA, a right to travel, right to free speech, right NOT to have special laws passed to strictly control you by race, etc.
You are ignoring obvious evidence of "language shift" regarding the phrase "privileges and immunities".
