Bettie’s List
Joe & Dillard PERRY
Jesse & Dora McGEE
William O. BEALL
Charles COHEE
Caldonia NEWBERRY
Buck Colbert FRANKLIN
Webster BALLINGER
List of Complainants
Choctaw Chickasaw Citizenship Court
Newspaper Articles
Supreme Court Memorandum
Legal Definition of Descent
Congressional Record
1896 Application for Citizenship
Bettie LIGON
Born Bettie LOVE on March 1, 1865 in Burneyville, Indian Territory she has become one of the best known women leaders among the Choctaw and Chickasaw Freedmen history.
Bettie was the daughter of an enslaved woman by the name of Margaret Ann WILSON nee ALEXANDER and Robert Howard LOVE; one of the leading men in the Chickasaw Nation.
It was her mixed heritage of Chickasaw Indian and African descent that catapulted Bettie into the annals of history, the Congressional Record, the Supreme Court and history books that continue to piece together her story of struggle, perseverance and determination to correct the mistaken idea that the children of Native American men and women of African descent are considered non-Indian because their mothers.
Bettie died in 1912 due to complications of pneumonia; she was never recognized during her lifetime by the Chickasaw Nation as a member. Bettie and her children and their descendants were never given the rights and privileges of citizenship because it was thought that the African blood of her mother “contaminated” the blood of her father.
It would appear that because of decisions by the United States Congress, the Supreme Court, the Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations all have continued this concept of race without taking the time to question and correcting the decisions that have impacted every descendant of every man, woman and child that form the approximately two thousand names that comprises Bettie’s List.
Bettie was the daughter of an enslaved woman by the name of Margaret Ann WILSON nee ALEXANDER and Robert Howard LOVE; one of the leading men in the Chickasaw Nation.
It was her mixed heritage of Chickasaw Indian and African descent that catapulted Bettie into the annals of history, the Congressional Record, the Supreme Court and history books that continue to piece together her story of struggle, perseverance and determination to correct the mistaken idea that the children of Native American men and women of African descent are considered non-Indian because their mothers.
Bettie died in 1912 due to complications of pneumonia; she was never recognized during her lifetime by the Chickasaw Nation as a member. Bettie and her children and their descendants were never given the rights and privileges of citizenship because it was thought that the African blood of her mother “contaminated” the blood of her father.
It would appear that because of decisions by the United States Congress, the Supreme Court, the Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations all have continued this concept of race without taking the time to question and correcting the decisions that have impacted every descendant of every man, woman and child that form the approximately two thousand names that comprises Bettie’s List.