During the convention, Calhoon reiterated the views he had written in his pamphlet in an oratory delivered to the convention's members, saying that allowing African Americans to vote would lead to the "ruin" of the state, for they were allegedly "unfit to rule": Due to his prominent judicial position on the state's supreme court, any judicial challenges to the 1890 constitution that could have been brought forth to the court would have been rejected by him. Calhoon died in November 1908. Republicans 132 of the delegates at the convention were white Democrats, who were determined in their efforts to restrict and infringe upon the rights of black Mississippians. Marsh Cook, a white Republican from Jasper County who supported African American voting, attempted to join the convention despite receiving death threats for attempting to do so. For supporting the right of black Mississippians to vote in the state's elections, Cook was lynched and killed on a remote rural road, a common fate for many who opposed the Democrats at the time. African Americans The only black member of the 1890 constitutional convention was Isaiah Montgomery from Mound Bayou, whom white Democrats invited to the convention because he had been a former slave of Confederate president Jefferson Davis's brother, and he was willing to support their desires of total African-American voter disenfranchisement. Montgomery delivered a speech at the convention advocating black disenfranchisement to the approval of the Democrats, but much to the outrage of his black peers, who labelled him a "traitor" and likened him to Judas Iscariot. Adoption Originally containing fourteen articles upon its adoption on November 1, 1890, Mississippi's 1890 state constitution enlarged the powers of the state government and was longer than the 1868 one it replaced, which only had thirteen articles. Revisions and proposals A constitutional amendment creating an initiative system was passed by the state legislature and approved by voters in 1914, and was inserted into the constitution in 1916, as the legislature was required to wait until its next regular session to insert ratified constitutional amendments. The state Supreme Court upheld the referendum system in 1917, but overturned it in 1922, making it the first time the court ruled a constitutional amendment unconstitutional. Justice George H. Ethridge, whose vote change in the rulings swung the results, stated in 1925 that "This system upsets our carefully worked out scheme for white control of the Legislature and the