Abandoned on the Steps of the Supreme Court

From April 13, 1907 to at least March 13, 1911 Webster Ballinger for four years of advocated that the mixed African-Native descendants of recognized Chickasaw and Choctaw Indians were entitled to be enrolled as “citizens by blood” as the attorney for approximately two thousand people he decided he no longer believed in the legal theory he espoused during those four years.

Webster Ballinger presented his case before one congressional hearing after the other explaining that lineal descent was the basis for determining if someone was entitled to three hundred and twenty acres of land.

Attorney Ballinger decided to abandon this lawsuit for the two thousand people of “mixed” Negro and Native American ancestry because it was probably better to argue for a “class who are unquestionably Indians.”

Webster Ballinger seemingly on his own decided that the two thousand men, women and children who were the product of an Indian father and mother of “African” descent having already received forty acres of land; providing them with a place to live and make a living was enough compared to another class of people who were either “full-blood” or “mixed Indian and white blood” who were “more deserving of consideration than the claims of the mixed Indians and negroes. (sic)”

As the attorney for Equity Case 7071 it appears this man “abandoned” his clients and the contracts he had with them because they “would be prejudicial to success in securing the rights of that class of cases about which there is no question.”

It is more than one-hundred years later; the Supreme Court of the United States never heard this case because of the decision by one man not to file a legal brief cause the case never to be argued before the court. As an attorney he appears to have failed in his fiduciary responsibility to represent his clients and their descendants.

There is no evidence he informed his clients of his abandonment and the record does not indicate if there were any other attempts to pursue equity for the two-thousand petitions for transfer and their descendants.

It is clear this injustice deserves to be repaired and a just resolution to the question about their claim of being enrolled as Chickasaw and Choctaw citizens and restitution for the three hundred and twenty acres they were entitled to before Webster Ballinger decided he would abandon them at the eleventh hour, on the steps of the United States Supreme Court?

Whether he would have prevailed is not known. Whether he jeopardized the case for his other clients can only be answered by the historical record. Is this a political question and can the descendants ever be made whole?