• DOI:10.2307/2207756
• Corpus ID: 152317640

Separate but Not Equal: The Supreme Court's First Decision on Racial Discrimination in Schools

@article{Kousser1980SeparateBN,
  title={Separate but Not Equal: The Supreme Court's First Decision on Racial Discrimination in Schools},
  author={J. Morgan Kousser},
  journal={Journal of Southern History},
  year={1980},
  volume={46},
  pages={17}
}

• J. M. Kousser
• Published 1 February 1980
• Law
• Journal of Southern History

In 1899, three years after the “separate but equal” decision of Plessy v. Ferguson, the U. S. Supreme Court for the first
time confronted the problem of racial discrimination in education.
Writing for a unanimous court, Justice John Marshall Harlan,
whose recently refurbished reputation rests chiefly on his liberal
opinions in Negro rights cases, decided in effect that the judiciary
would do no more to guarantee equality in public services than it
had to stop legalized segregation. " ... the education of the people
in schools maintained by state taxation is a matter belonging to the
respective States," the justice, who was rarely a protector of states'
rights, concluded, "and any interference on the part of Federal
authority with the management of such schools cannot be justified
except in the case of a clear and unmistakable disregard of rights
secured by the supreme law of the land. We have here no such case
to be determined …. " Attracting even less attention at the time
than Plessy did, the case of Joseph W. Cumming, James S. Harper,
and John C. Ladeveze v. School Board of Richmond County, Ga.
has never received the attention Plessy gained in the wake of the
outlawing of segregation in the 1954 Brown decision.