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strauder v. west virginia 5 and proceedings in the State of West Virginia for the security of his person as is enjoyed by white citizens, and that he had less chance of enforcing in the courts of the State his rights on the prosecution, as a citizen of the United States, and that the probabilities of a denial of them to him as such citizen on every trial which might take place on the indictment in the courts of the State were much more enhanced than if he was a white man.’ This petition was denied by the State court, and the cause was forced to trial. . . . The law of the State to which reference was made in the petition for removal and in the several motions was enacted on the 12th of March, 1873 and it is as follows: ‘All white male persons who are twenty-one years of age and who are citizens of this State shall be liable to serve as jurors, except as herein provided.’3 The persons excepted are State officials. In this court, several errors have been assigned, and the controlling questions underlying them all are, first, whether, by the Constitution and laws of the United States, every citizen of the United States has a right to a trial of an indictment against him by a jury selected and impanelled without discrimination against his race or color, because of race or color and, second, if he has such a right, and is denied its enjoyment by the State in which he is indicted, may he cause the case to be removed into the Circuit Court of the United States? It is to be observed that the first of these questions is not whether a colored man, when an indictment has been preferred against him, has a right to a grand or a petit jury composed in whole or in part of persons of his own race or color, but it is whether, in the composi- tion or selection of jurors by whom he is to be indicted or tried, all persons of his race or color may be excluded by law, solely because of their race or color, so that by no possibility can any colored man sit upon the jury. The questions are important, for they demand a construction of the recent amendments of the Constitution.4 If the defendant has a right to have a jury selected for the trial of his case without discrimination against all persons of his race or color, because of their race or color, the right, if not created, is protected by those amendments, and the 3 The West Virginia law provided that only white males 21 years of age or older could serve as jurors. Notice that the law not only discriminated on the basis of race but also egregiously discriminated on the basis of gender. Only certain males—and no females—were allowed to serve on juries. 4 The “recent amendments” Justice Strong refers to in his opinion are the Reconstruc- tion Amendments—the Thirteenth, Four- teenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. The Thirteenth Amendment outlawed slavery and involuntary servitude. The Fourteenth Amendment provided that citizens have certain privileges and immunities, due pro- cess, and equal protection rights. The Fif- teenth Amendment ensured that the right to vote could not be abridged on the basis of race.