"The highest court in the Cherokee Nation, the Judicial Appeals Tribunal, made a landmark decision Tuesday, ruling that Cherokee freedmen have the same rights as other members of the tribe.

For more than 20 years, freedmen have been denied the right to vote in Cherokee elections and to receive the services that other Cherokees benefit from because they are Native Americans.

The divide between Cherokees and freedmen, descendants of former slaves of Cherokee citizens who were enrolled with the Dawes Commission, goes back further than 1983, when freedmen were denied the right to vote.

It has its roots in America�s early slave trade and the Jim Crow laws of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries."

Get the Story:
Editorial: Freedmen are accepted (The Muskogee Phoenix 3/10)

Judicial Appeals Tribunal Decision:
Allen v. Cherokee Nation (March 7, 2006)

Related Story:
Freedmen to become Cherokee citizens (The Oklahoman 3/9)
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Relevant Links:
Freedmen Of The Five Civilized Tribes - http://www.freedmen5tribes.com
Freedmen Conference - http://www.freedmenconference.com
Cherokee Nation - http://www.cherokee.org

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