McAlester Weekly Tribune
McAlester, Oklahoma 21 Dec, 1911 p 1.
Bettie Love Ligon, Head Litigant Equity 7071
© Terry Ligon
This week marks the 110th anniversary of the end of Equity Case 7071. The hopes of almost 2000 Freedmen from the Chickasaw Nation were dashed, when the Supreme Court dismissed their case, after their attorney turned against the Freedmen, and suddenly chose not to file the brief, thus preventing their case from being heard in the United States Supreme Court.
Equity 7071 was the case when over 1500 Chickasaw Freedmen who were fathered by Chickasaw men, sought to have their names transferred to the rolls by blood, because they were half Chickasaw by blood. Being transferred to the blood roll did not mean that they were denying that they had African blood. They sought the transfer, because having their Chickasaw blood being recognized, they would have received, 320 acres of land, and not the mere 40 acres that they and nearby Choctaws, chose to give to their former slaves.
While the 40 acre allotment was being given to both Chickasaw and Choctaw Freedmen, those who were counted as persons "by blood" as well as inter-married whites were given 8 times more land, and had 8 times more of an opportunity to establish generational wealth than those whom they had oppressed, and enslaved, and forced to labor for them, for generations.
The case was challenged when a brave woman called Bettie Ligon, daughter of Robert H. Love, filed suit requesting to be moved from the roll of Freedmen to those by blood, almost 2000 other people joined her in the suit. A lawyer was secured by the Freedmen Webster Ballinger, but suddenly after weeks of working with the Freedmen on a cause that he had convince them was a just cause, he suddently changed his mind, and did not file the brief in front of the United States Supreme Court.
The Freedmen, many of whom had true relationships with their Chickasaw fathers, saw their opportunity to obtain a similar sized portion of land, reduced 8 times, for the only reason being that their mother was a woman with African blood. Their Indian blood did not count, although the white blood of inter-married whites was accepted. These freedmen men, women and children with Chickasaw fathers were being punished for their birth from African women.
Sadly, the policy exists today, with in both Chickasaw and Choctaw communities saying that "they did right by the Freedmen", giving them 8 time less land, and denying their citizenship today.
Today's policy is based on the decision to not record blood quantum, of Freedmen in the 1890s and to use the rolls that ommitted their blood tie, as the basis for enrollment, thus keeping out black Chickasaw and Choctaw descendants. This allowed both nations to still choose to deny -- or as some see it, to punish people for having ancestors who were held against their will in bondage. Yet many still seek citizenship unaware of this anti-black bias held towards them.
Meanwhile individuals with next to no native blood (as little as 1/1000th blood) are free admitted into both nations today. Those who descend from inter-married whites who were never enslaved, and who had no native blood are welcomed into both tribes today.
Those whose ancestors toiled for generations, with no payment, to be sold at will of those holding them in bondage, are today prohibited from citizeship.
But for a brief moment, one brave woman led the struggle and filed a suit to be recognized for who she was, Bettie Love Ligon, daughter of her Chickasaw father Robert H. Love.
May she and all of those once enslaved never be forgotten.
