Title:	Slavery in the Cherokee Nation
Other Titles:	The Keetoowah Society and the Defining of a People 1855–1867
Authors:	Patrick N., Minges Graham Russell Hodges
Keywords:	Keetowah Society
Issue Date:	2003
Publisher:	Routledge
Description:	On June 12, 1998, an appeal was filed before the Judicial Appeals Tribunal of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma on behalf of Bernice Riggs, a descendent of Cherokee Freedmen. The appeal sought the restoration of the terms of an 1866 treaty allowing descendants of former slaves and free persons of color in the Cherokee Nation to be treated as Cherokee citizens entitled to all the rights and privileges of such including the right to vote in national elections.2 The action in this suit dates back to a letter of complaint first filed with the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice claiming that the Cherokee Nation had violated the civil rights of its Freedmen.3 In June, 1984, sixteen people filed a class-action lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Tulsa, Oklahoma against officials of both the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and the federal government. They claimed that the rights of citizenship of the Cherokee Nation’s black freedmen have been continually ignored in spite of the precedent established by the 1866 treaty.4 The struggle for an inclusive Cherokee Nation which these lawsuits represent is not a new one; the Treaty of 1866 was signed following the bitter struggle of the Civil War in the Indian Territory—a war in which the Indian Territory paid a higher price than nearly any other state in the union
URI:	http://10.6.20.12:80/handle/123456789/9834
ISBN:	0-203-49675-2
Appears in Collections:	African Studies

Items in DSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.