In the 1964 case of McKinnie et al. v. Tennessee, the U.S Supreme Court ruled in favor of the state of Tennessee, upholding a lower court's decision to dismiss an indictment against several African American defendants who were charged with conspiracy to commit burglary and grand larceny. The defendants argued that their constitutional rights had been violated because they were indicted by a grand jury from which African Americans had been systematically excluded due to racial discrimination. However, both the trial court and appellate courts found no evidence supporting this claim. The Supreme Court affirmed these decisions on appeal without issuing an opinion or providing any reasoning for its decision - a practice known as "summary affirmance". This means that while it agreed with the lower courts' rulings, it did not necessarily agree with their reasoning or find them persuasive enough to warrant further discussion or analysis. This case is significant because it highlights how systemic racism can potentially influence legal proceedings and outcomes even when there is no explicit evidence of discriminatory intent or practices.

The dissenting opinion in the McKinnie et al. v. Tennessee case argued that the majority's decision to uphold a state law requiring payment of poll taxes as a prerequisite for voting was fundamentally flawed and unconstitutional. The dissenters contended that such laws disproportionately affected poor citizens, effectively denying them their right to vote based on their economic status, which is contrary to democratic principles and equal protection under the law guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. They also pointed out that these laws were historically used as tools of racial discrimination against African Americans in Southern states, further undermining their constitutionality. Moreover, they disagreed with the majority's view that this issue should be left up to individual states' discretion rather than being addressed at a federal level.