EFFECT OF SECTION 4 OF ACT OF
APRIL 26, 1906
What has been the effect of the act approved
April 26, 1906
? The Commissioner has adjudicated cases involving the rights of more than 1,000
of the persons seeking a transfer of their names from the freedmen roll to the
roll of citizens by blood, and with four or five exceptions every case has been
decided adversely to the applicant on the ground that “the records do not
disclose the fact that an application was made by or for the party seeking a
transfer of his or her name from the freedmen roll to the roll of citizens by
blood within the time prescribed by law.” Thus section 4 of the act approved
April 26, 1900, has accomplished the object which its author intended it to
accomplish, and has apparently effectually prevented the transfer of a single
name of any of these persons from the freed men roll to the roll of citizens by
blood, to which they, were entitled under the decision of the Department in the,
test case known as the case of Joe
and Dillard Perry.
Is it just or equitable to hold the innocent
minor—in many cases a mere babe in the arms of the mother—accountable for
noncompliance with the illegal requirements of the Commission and the failure of
the Commission to properly perform its work? Yet that is what Congress did when
it unwittingly enacted section 4 of the act approved
April 26, 1906
. By what rule of law, by what known principle of equity, can such action be
justified?