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Equity Case 7071
The lawsuit filed April 13, 1907 on behalf of Bettie Ligon and approximately 1600 individuals dealt with the issue of land, identity and what constituted citizenship in the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nation.
The men, women and children who were the complainants in what is now known as “Equity Case 7071” were overwhelmingly the descendants of men who were “Native American” and women who were considered to be of African descent. The children of this mixture were identified as “non-Indian” and therefore not entitled to the citizenship of their father’s in the nations of their birth.
When the governments of these nations along with the United States Department of the Interior began the process of dissolving Indian Territory so it would become the state of Oklahoma, these men, women and children were denied their rights and privileges of not only citizenship in the nations of their birth but they were also denied the allotment of 320 acres of land that was to be given everyone with Indian ancestry.
The basis of this decision was rooted in the antebellum theory that an individuals “race” was based on the “race” of their mother only.” This meant that this decision to exclude all of these people from their rightful amount of land and citizenship would deny them their basic rights and the rights of every
The men, women and children who were the complainants in what is now known as “Equity Case 7071” were overwhelmingly the descendants of men who were “Native American” and women who were considered to be of African descent. The children of this mixture were identified as “non-Indian” and therefore not entitled to the citizenship of their father’s in the nations of their birth.
When the governments of these nations along with the United States Department of the Interior began the process of dissolving Indian Territory so it would become the state of Oklahoma, these men, women and children were denied their rights and privileges of not only citizenship in the nations of their birth but they were also denied the allotment of 320 acres of land that was to be given everyone with Indian ancestry.
The basis of this decision was rooted in the antebellum theory that an individuals “race” was based on the “race” of their mother only.” This meant that this decision to exclude all of these people from their rightful amount of land and citizenship would deny them their basic rights and the rights of every
The body of a man is very small compared with the spirit that inhabits it.
~African oral tradition
~African oral tradition
