My name is Ajay Nehaul. I am a political science major that is also currently pursuing FSU’s Global Citizenship Certificate. I am aspiring to one day to attend law school and to one day become a criminal defense attorney. I will be conducting research over the summer semester, which will focus on the manner in which district courts may have possibly misconstrued legislation enacted by state legislatures to undermine the 14th amendment rights of African Americans between the late 1800s to the 19070s in Thomasville Georgia. I selected Thomasville as the focus of my study as it is a small southern town which sets itself apart from other southern towns. I was a research assistant in the previous semester conducting archival research on this town and found many interesting things on Thomasville in regard to its political climate and legal system. This served as inspiration for my current research project.
The goal of this research project is to evaluate the extent to which African Americans, residing in Thomasville, Georgia, faced the brunt of the legal system and how it affected their rights as Americans. The 14th Amendment is a federal which grants the U.S. citizenry the rights to due process by the law and equal protection. These laws enumerated in the constitution meant that African Americans should have been able to enjoy the fundamental right of equality without being subjected to racial discriminatory laws. This amendment meant that the legal rights of African Americans should be safeguarded, as the state should not be able to infringe upon their liberty and freedoms.
Over the summer I will be mainly focus on data collection. I will frequently visit the Thomas county courthouse in Thomasville and record data from the case books (i.e. books consisting of legal precedent and previous case law) onto an excel spreadsheet. This data will encompass the outcome of a case, the ethnicity of the defendant and possibly the ethnicity of the judge, the type of charge and the name of the judge. This data will then be coded onto a software that will generate statistical data in order to assist me in establishing causality and leading me to either prove or disprove my hypothesis. I plan to read every fifth case to expedite the process and to also ensure that the sample I am using is random. I will also be incorporating existing scholarly articles to inform my hypothesis which will add validity to my claims. I will also look at previous notes from judges during this time period, which is held at the Thomasville history center, to assess whether some judges had preconceived notions of the defendants that came before them in court. This could influence adjudication and indicate that judges were not presiding over cases in a non-partisan manner.
Header image is of the Thomas County Courthouse (Creative Commons license).
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