Following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the San Francisco school board, apparently to avoid contaminating white students, ordered children of Japanese descent, along with those of Chinese and Korean descent, segregated from white children. Roosevelt's intervention was geo-politically motivated. Just the previous year, he had brokered an end to the Russo-Japanese War, in which Japan had defeated the Russian navy. The war sent shock waves through the West and Roosevelt did not want to antagonize a militarily powerful Japan. See, Black's Law Dictionary, Abr.
Persons belonging to it are, with few exceptions, absolutely excluded from our country.
I allude to the Chinese race. But, by the statute in question, a Chinaman can ride in the same passenger coach with white citizens of the United States, while citizens of the black race in Louisiana, many of whom, perhaps, risked their lives for the preservation of the Union, who are entitled, by law, to participate in the political control of the state and nation, who are not excluded, by law or by reason of their race, from public stations of any kind, and who have all the legal rights that belong to white citizens, are yet declared to be criminals, liable to imprisonment, if they ride in a public coach occupied by citizens of the white race. At issue in Gong Lum were separate high schools for whites and coloreds. At issue in Brown was the separation of white and Negro children in the Kansas public schools. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.