Until Justice Be Done: America's First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction

by Kate Masur

Moreover, two Ohio Supreme Court decisions in 1842 recognized the right to vote of a limited number of men of color. The court had previously held that, in the matter of giving testimony in court, persons who were more than one-half white should be accorded the privileges of white people. Ohioans of racially mixed background pressed the court to apply the same principle to voting, and the court obliged in two decisions—one concerning a person of mixed Black and white background, and the other a person whose mixture included Native American ancestry. In both cases, the court found that because mixed-race people who were deemed more than one-half white were viewed as white for legal purposes, they should also be treated as white for purposes of voting. As a result of the decisions, some mixed-race people could and did vote in Ohio elections.