Case Name: BRIGGS et al. v. ELLIOTT et al.
Court: United States District Court for the Eastern District of South Carolina
Jurisdiction: United States
Decision Date: 1951-06-23
Citations: 98 F. Supp. 529
Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 2657
Parties: BRIGGS et al. v. ELLIOTT et al.
Judges: 
Reporter: Federal Supplement
Volume: 98
Pages: 529–548

Head Matter:
BRIGGS et al. v. ELLIOTT et al.
Civ. A. No. 2657.
United States District Court E. D. South Carolina, Charleston Division.
Heard May 28, 1951.
Decided June 23, 1951.
Waring, J., dissented.
4 Thurgood Marshall, Robert L. Carter, New York City, Harold R. Boulware, Columbia, S. C., Spottswood W. Robinson, III, Richmond, Va., Arthur Shores, Birmingham, Ala., A. T. Walden, Atlanta, Ga., for plaintiffs.
T. C. Callison Atty. Gen., of South Carolina, Robert McC. Figg, Jr., Charleston, S. C., S. E. Rogers, Summerton, S. C., for defendants.
Before PARKER, Circuit Judge, and WARING and TIMMERMAN, District Judges.

Opinion:
PARKER, Circuit Judge.
This is a suit for a declaratory judgment and injunctive relief in which it is alleged that the schools and educational facilities provided for Negro children in School District No. 22 in Clarendon County, South Carolina, are inferior to those provided for white children in that district and that this amounts to a denial of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed them by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution, and further that the segregation of Negro and white children in the public schools, required by Article 11, section 7 of the Constitution of South Carolina and section 5377 of the Code of Laws of that state, is of itself violative of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Plaintiffs are Negro children of school age who are entitled to attend the public schools in District No. 22 in Clarendon County, their parents and guardians. Defendants are the school officials who, as officers of the state, have control of the schools in the district. A court of three judges has been convened pursuant to the provisions of 28 U.S.C. § 2281 and 2284, the evidence offered by the parties has been heard and the case has been submitted upon the briefs and arguments of counsel.
At the beginning of the hearing the defendants admitted upon the record that "the educational facilities, equipment, curricula and opportunities afforded in School District No. 22 for colored pupils are not substantially equal to those afforded for white pupils". The evidence offered in the case fully sustains this admission. The defendants contend, however, that the district is one of the rural school districts which has not kept pace with urban districts in providing educational facilities for the children of either race, and that the inequalities have resulted from limited resources and from, the disposition of the school officials to spend the limited funds available "for the most immediate demands rather than in the light of the overall picture". They state that under the leadership of Governor Byrnes the Legislature of South Carolina has made provision for a bond issue of $75,-000,000 with a three per cent sales tax to support it for the purpose of equalizing educational opportunities and facilities throughout the state and of meeting the problem of providing equal educational opportunities for Negro children where this had not been done. They have offered evidence to show that this educational program is going forward and that under it the educational 'facilities in the district will be greatly improved for both races and that Negro children will be afforded educational facilities and opportunities in all respects equal to those afforded white children.
There can be no question but that where separate schools are maintained for Negroes and whites, the educational facilities and opportunities afforded by them must be equal. The state may not
deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, says the Fourteenth Amendment; and this means that, when the state undertakes public education, it may not discriminate against any individual on account of race but must offer equal opportunity to all. As said by Chief Justice Hughes in Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, 305 U.S. 337, 349, 59 S.Ct. 232, 236, 83 L.Ed. 208. "The admissibility of laws separating the races in the enjoyment of privileges afforded by the State rests wholly upon the equality of the privileges which the laws give to the separated groups within the State." See also Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629, 70 S.Ct. 848, 94 L.Ed. 1114; Corbin v. County School Board of Pulaski County, 4 Cir., 177 F.2d 924; Carter v. School Board of Arlington County, Va., 4 Cir., 182 F.2d 531; McKissick v. Carmichael, 4 Cir., 187 F.2d 949. We think it clear, therefore, that plaintiffs are entitled to a declaration to the effect that the school facilities now afforded Negro children in District No. 22 are not equal to the facilities afforded white children in the district and to a mandatory injunction requiring that equal facilities be afforded them. How this shall be done is a matter for the school authorities and not for the court, so long as it is done in good faith and equality of facilities is afforded; but it must be done promptly and the court in addition to issuing an injunction to that effect will retain the cause upon its docket for further orders and will require that defendants file within six months a report showing the action that has been taken by them to carry out the order.
Plaintiffs ask that, in addition to granting them relief on account of the inferiority of the educational facilities furnished them, we hold that segregation of the races in the public schools, as required by the Constitution and statutes of South Carolina, is of itself a denial of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment, and that we enjoin the enforcement of the constitutional provision and statute requiring it and by our injunction require defendants to admit Negroes to schools to which white students are admitted within the district. We think, however, that segregation of the races in the public schools, so long as equality of rights is preserved, is a matter of legislative policy for the several states, with which the federal courts are powerless to interfere.
One of the great virtues of our constitutional system is that, while the federal government protects the fundamental rights of the individual, it leaves to the several states the solution of local problems. In a country with a great expanse of territory with peoples of widely differing customs and ideas, local self government in local matters is essential to the peace and happiness of the people in the several communities as well as to the strength and unity of the country as a whole. It is universally held, therefore, that each state shall determine for itself, subject to the observance of the fundamental rights and liberties guaranteed by the federal Constitution, how it shall exercise the police power, i. e. the power to legislate with respect to the safety, morals, health and general welfare. And in no field is this right of the several states more clearly recognized than in that of public education. As was well said by Mr. Justice Harlan, speaking for a unanimous court in Cumming v. County Board of Education, 175 U.S. 528, 545, 20 S.Ct. 197, 201, 44 L.Ed. 262, "while all admit that the benefits and burdens of public taxation must be shared by citizens without discrimination against any class on account of their race, the education of the people in schools maintained by state taxation is a matter belonging to the respective states, 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."
It is equally well .settled that there is no denial of the equal protection of the laws in segregating children in the schools for purposes of education, if the children of the different races are given equal facilities and opportunities. The leading case on the subject in the Supreme Court is Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 16 S.Ct. 1138, 1140, 41 L.Ed. 256, which involved segregation in railroad trains, but in which the segregation there involved was referred to as being governed by the same principle as segregation in the schools. In that case the Court said: "The object of the amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but, in the nature of things, it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political, equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either. Laws permitting, and even requiring, their separation, in places where they are liable to be brought into contact, do not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the other, and have been generally, if not universally, recognized as within the competency of the state legislatures in' the exercise of their police power. The most common instance of this is connected with the establishment of separate schools for white and colored children, which has been held to be a valid exercise of the legislative power even by courts of states where the political rights of the colored race have been longest and most earnestly enforced."
Later in the opinion the Court said: "So far, then, as a conflict with the fourteenth amendment is concerned, the case reduces itself to the question whether the statute of Louisiana is a reasonable regulation, and with respect to this there must necessarily be a large discretion on the part of the legislature. In determining the question of reasonableness, it is at liberty to act with reference to the established usages, customs, and traditions of the people, and with a view to the promotion of their comfort, and the presei-vation of the public peace and good order." (Italics supplied.)
Directly in point and absolutely controlling upon us .so long a9 it stands unreversed by the Supreme Court is Gong Lum v. Rice, 275 U.S. 78, 48 S.Ct. 91, 93, 72 L.Ed. 172, in which the complaint was that a child of Chinese parentage was excluded from a school maintained for white children under a segregation law and was permitted to enter only a school maintained for colored children. Although attempt is made to dis tinguish this case, it cannot be distinguished. The question as to the validity of segregation in the public schools on the ground of race was squarely raised, the Fourteenth Amendment was relied upon as forbidding segregation and the issue was squarely met by the Court. What was said by Chief Justice Taft speaking for a unanimous court, is determinative of the question before us. Said he:
"The case then reduces itself to the question whether a state can be said to afford to a child of Chinese ancestry, born in this country and a citizen of the United States, the equal protection of the laws, by giving her the opportunity for a common school education in a school which receives only colored children of the brown, yellow or black races.
"The right and power of the state to regulate the method of providing for the education of its youth at public expense is clear.
"The question here is whether a Chinese citizen of the United States is denied equal protection of the laws when he is classed among the colored races and furnished facilities for education equal to that offered to all, whether white, brown, yellow, or black. Were this a new question, it would call for very full argument and consideration; but we think that it is the same question which has been many times decided to be within the constitutional power of the state Legislature to settle, without intervention of the federal courts under the federal Constitution. Roberts v. City of Boston, 5 Cush. (Mass.) 198, 206, 208, 209; State ex rel. Garnes v. McCann, 21 Ohio St. 198, 210; People ex rel. King v. Gallagher, 93 N.Y. 438; People ex rel. Cisco v. School Board, 161 N.Y. 598, 56 N.E. 81, 48 L.R.A. 113; Ward v. Flood, 48 Cal. 36; Wysinger v. Crookshank, 82 Cal. 588, 590, 23 P. 54; Reynolds v. Board of Education, 66 Kan. 672, 72 P. 274; McMillan v. School Committee, 107 N.C. 609, 12 S.E. 330, 10 L.R.A. 823; Cory v. Carter, 48 Ind. 327; Lehew v. Brummell, 103 Mo. 546, 15 S.W. 765, 11 L.R.A. 828; Dameron v. Bayless, 14 Ariz. 180, 126 P. 273; State ex rel. Stoutmeyer v. Duffy, 7 Nev. 342, 348, 355; Bertonneau v. Board, 3 Woods 177, 3 Fed.Cas. 294, [Case] No. 1,361; United States v. Buntin (C.C.), 10 F. 730, 735; Wong Him v. Callahan (C.C.), 119 F. 381.
"In Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 544, 545, 16 S.Ct. 1138, 1140, 41 L.Ed. 256, in upholding the validity under the Fourteenth Amendment of a statute of Louisiana requiring the separation of the white and colored races in railway coaches, a more difficult question than this, this court, speaking of permitted race separation, said:
" 'The most common instance of this is connected with the establishment of separate schools for white and colored children, which has been held to be a valid exercise of the legislative power even by courts of states where the political rights of the colored race have been longest and most earnestly enforced.'
*
"Most of the cases cited arose, it is true, over the establishment of separate schools as between white pupils and black pupils; but we cannot think that the question is any different, or that any different result can be reached, assuming the cases above cited to be rightly decided, where the issue is as between white pupils and the pupils of the yellow races. The decision is within the discretion of the state in regulating its public schools, and does not conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment." (Italics supplied.)
Only a little over a year ago, the question was before the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia in Carr v. Corning, 86 U.S.App.D.C. 173, 182 F.2d 14, 16, a case involving the validity of segregation within the District, and the whole matter was exhaustively explored in the light of history and the pertinent decisions in an able opinion by Judge Prettyman, who said:
"It is urged that the separation of the races is itself, apart from equality or inequality of treatment, forbidden by the Constitution. The question thus posed is whether the Constitution lifted this problem out of the hands of all legislatures and settled it. We do not think it did. Since the beginning of human history, no circumstance has given rise to more difficult and delicate problems than has the coexist ence of different races in the same area. Centuries of hitter experience in all parts of the world have proved that rhe problem is insoluble by force of any sort. The same history shows that it is soluble by the patient processes of community experience. Such problems lie naturally in the field of legislation, a method susceptible of experimentation, of development, of adjustment to the current necessities in a variety of community circumstance. We do- not believe that the makers of the first ten Amendments in 1789 or of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1866 meant to foreclose legislative treatment of the problem in this country.
"This is not to decry efforts to reach that state of common existence which is the obvious highest good in our concept of civilization. 'It is merely to say that the social and economic interrelationship of two races living together is a legislative problem, as yet not solved, and is not a problem solved fully, finally and unequivocally by a fiat enacted many years ago. We must remember that on this particular point we are interpreting a constitution and not enacting a statute.
"We are not unmindful of the debates which -occurred in Congress relative to the Civil Rights Act of April 9, 1866, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Civil Rights Act of March 1, 1875. -But the actions of Congress, the discussion in the Civil Rights cases, and the fact that in 1862, 1864, 1866 and 1874 Congress, as we shall point out in a moment, enacted legislation which specifically provided for separation of the races in the schools of the District of Columbia, conclusively support our view of the Amendment and its effect.
"The Supreme Court has consistently held that if there be an 'equality of the privileges which the laws give to the separated groups', the races may be separated. That is to say that constitutional invalidity does not arise from, the mere fact of separation but may a,rise from an inequality of treatment. -Other courts have long ¡held to the same effect."
•It should be borne in mind that in the above cases the courts have not been dealing with hypothetical situations or mere theory, but with situations which have actually developed in the relationship of the races throughout the country. Segregation of the races in the public schools has not been confined to South Carolina or even to the South but prevails in many other states where Negroes are present in large numbers. Even when n-ot required by law, it is customary in many places. Congress has provided for it by federal statute in the District of Columbia; and seventeen of the states have statutes or constitutional provisions requiring it. They are Alabama, .Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. And the validity of legislatively requiring segregation in the schools has been upheld wherever the question has been raised. See Wong Him v. Callahan, C. C., 119 F. 381; United States v. Buntin, C.C., 10 F. 730; Bertonneau v. Board of Directors, 3 Fed.Cas. 294, No. 1,361; Dameron v. Bayless, 14 Ariz. 180, 126 P. 273; Maddox v. Neal, 45 Ark. 121, 55 Am.Rep. 540; Ward v. Flood, 48 Cal. 36, 17 Am. Rep. 405; Cory v. Carter, 48 Ind. 327, 17 Am.Rep. 738; Graham v. Board of Education, 153 Kan. 840, 114 P.2d 313; Richardson v. Board of Education, 72 Kan. 629, 84 P. 538; Reynolds v. Board of Education, 66 Kan. 672, 72 P. 274; Chrisman v. Mayor of City of Brookhaven, 70 Miss. 477, 12 So. 458; Lehew v. Brummell, 103 Mo. 546, 15 S.W. 765, 11 L.R.A. 828, 23 Am.St.Rep. 895; State ex rel. Stoutmeyer v. Duffy, 7 Nev. 342, 8 Am.Rep. 713; People ex rel. Cisco v. School Board, 161 N.Y. 598, 56 N.E. 81, 48 L.R.A. 113; People v. Gallagher, 93 N.Y. 438, 45 Am.Rep. 232; McMillan v. School Committee, 107 N.C. 609, 12 S.E. 330, 10 L.R.A. 823; State ex rel. Garnes v. McCann, 21 Ohio St. 198; Board of Education v. Board of Com'rs, 14 Okl. 322, 78 P. 455; Martin v. Board of Education, 42 W.Va. 514, 26 S.E. 348. No cases have been cited to us holding that such legislation is violative of the Fourteenth Amendment. We know of none, and diligent search of the authorities has failed to- reveal any.
Plaintiffs rely upon expressions contained in -opinions relating to professional education such as Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629, 70 S.Ct. 848, 94 L.Ed. 1114, McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, 339 U.S. 637, 70 S.Ct. 851, 94 L.Ed. 1149, and McKissick v. Carmichael, 4 Cir., 187 F.2d 949, where equality of opportunity was not afforded. Sweatt v. Painter, however, instead of helping them, emphasizes that the separate but equal doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson, has not been overruled, since the Supreme Court, although urged to overrule it, expressly refused to do so and based its decision on the ground that the educational facilities offered Negro- law students in that case were not equal to those offered white students. The decision in McKissick v. Carmichael, was based upon the same ground. The case of McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, involved humiliating and embarrassing treatment of a Negro graduate student to which no one should have been required to submit. Nothing of the sort is involved here.
The problem of segregation as applied to graduate and professional education is essentially different from that involved in segregation in education at the lower levels. In the graduate and professional schools the problem is one of affording equal educational facilities to persons sui juris and of mature personality. Because of the great expense of such education and the importance of the professional contacts established while carrying on the educational process, it is difficult for the state to maintain segregated schools for Negroes in this field which will afford them opportunities for education and professional advancement equal to- those afforded by the graduate and professional schools maintained for white persons. What the courts have said, and all they have said in the cases upon which plaintiffs rely is that, notwithstanding these difficulties, the opportunity afforded the Negro student must be equal to that afforded the white student and that the schools established for furnishing this instruction to white persons must be opened to Negroes if this is necessary to give them the equal opportunity which the Constitution requires.
The problem of segregation at the common school level is a very different one. At this level, as good education can be afforded in Negro schools as in white schools and the thought of establishing professional contacts does not enter ituo the picture. Moreover, education at this level is not a matter of voluntary choice on the part of the student but of compulsion by the state. The student is taken from the control of the family during school hours by compulsion of law and placed in control of the school, where he must associate with his fellow students. The law thus provides that the school shall supplement the work of the parent in the training of the child and in doing so it is entering a delicate field and one fraught with tensions and difficulties. In formulating educational policy at the common school level, therefore, the law must take account, not merely of the matter of affording instruction to the student, but also of the wishes of the parent as to the upbringing of the child and his associates in the formative period of childhood and adolescence. If public education is to have the support of the people through their legislatures, it must not go contrary to what they deem for the best interests of their children.
There is testimony to the effect that mixed schools will give better education and a better understanding of the community in which the child is to live than segregated schools. There is testimony, on the other hand, that mixed schools will result in racial friction and tension and that the only practical way of conducting public education in South Carolina is with segregated schools. .The questions thus presented are not questions of constitutional right but of legislative policy, which must be formulated, not in vacuo or with doctrinaire disregard of existing conditions, but in realistic approach to the situations to which it is to be applied. In some states, the legislatures may well decide that segregation in public schools should be abolished, in others that it should be maintained — all depending upon the relationships existing between the races and the tensions likely to be produced by an attempt to educate the children of the two races together in the same schools. The federal courts would be going far outside their constitutional function were they to attempt to prescribe educational policies for the states in such matters, however desirable such policies might be in the opinion of some sociologists or educators. For the federal courts to do so would result, not only in interference with local affairs by an agency of the federal government, but also in the substitution of the judicial for the legislative process in what is essentially a legislative matter.
The public schools are facilities provided and paid for by the states. The state's regulation of the facilities which it furnishes is not to be interfered with unless constitutional rights are clearly infringed. There is nothing in the Constitution that requires that the state grant to all members of the .public a common right to use every facility that it affords. Grants in aid of education or for the support of the indigent may properly be made upon an individual basis if no discrimination is practiced; and, if the family, which is the racial unit, may be considered in these, it may be considered also in providing public schools. The equal protection of the laws does not mean that the child must be treated as the property of the state and the wishes of his family as to his upbringing be disregarded. The classification of children for the purpose of education in separate schools has a basis grounded in reason and experience; and, if equal facilities are afforded, it cannot be condemned as discriminatory for, as said by Mr. Justice Reed in New York Rapid Transit Corp. v. City of New York, 303 U.S. 573, 578, 58 S.Ct. 721, 724, 82 L.Ed. 1024: "It has long been the law under the Fourteenth Amendment that 'a distinction in legislation is not arbitrary, if any state of facts reasonably can be conceived that would sustain it.' "
We are cited to cases having relation to zoning ordinances, restrictive covenants in deeds and segregation in public conveyances. It is clear, however, that nothing said in these cases would justify our disregarding the great volume of authority relating directly to education in the public schools, which involves not transient contacts, but associations which affect the interests of the home and the wishes of the people with regard to the upbringing of their children. As Chief Justice Taft pointed out in Gong Lum v. Rice, supra [275 U.S. 78, 48 S.Ct. 93], "a more difficult" question is presented by segregation in public conveyances than by segregation in the schools.
We conclude, therefore, that if equal facilities are offered, segregation of the races in the public schools as prescribed by the Constitution and laws of South Carolina is not of itself violative of the Fourteenth Amendment. We think that this conclusion is supported by overwhelming authority which we are not at liberty to disregard on the basis of theories advanced by a few educators and sociologists. Even if we felt at liberty to disregard other authorities, we may not ignore the unreversed decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States which are squarely in point and conclusive of the question before us. As said by the Court of Appeals of the Fourth Circuit in Boyer v. Garrett, 183 F.2d 582, a case involving segregation in a public playground, in which equality of treatment was admitted and segregation was attacked as being per se violative of the Fourteenth Amendment: "The contention of plaintiffs is that, notwithstanding this equality of treatment, the rule providing for segregation is violative of the provisions of the federal Constitution. .The District Court dismissed the complaint on the authority of Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 16 S.Ct. 1138, 41 L.Ed. 256; and the principal argument made on appeal is that the authority of Plessy v. Ferguson has been so weakened by subsequent decisions that we should no longer consider it as binding. We do not think, however, that we are at liberty thus to disregard a decision of the Supreme Court which that court has not seen fit to overrule and which it expressly refrained from reexamining, although urged to do so, in the very recent case of Sweatt v. Painter [339 U.S. 629], 70 S.Ct. 848 [94 L.Ed. 1114]. It is for the Supreme Court, not us, to overrule its decisions or to hold them outmoded."
To this we may add that, when seventeen states and the Congress of the United States have for more than three-quarters of a century required segregation of the races in the public schools, and when this has received the approval of the leading appellate courts of the country including the unanimous approval of the Supreme Court of the United States at a time when that court included Chief Justice Taft and Justices Stone, Holmes and Brandéis, it is a late day to say that such segregation is violative of fundamental constitutional rights. It is hardly reasonable to suppose that legislative bodies over so wide a territory, including the Congress of the United States, and great judges of high courts have knowingly defied the Constitution for so long a period or that they have acted in ignorance of the meaning of its provisions. The constitutional principle is the same now that it has been throughout this period; and if conditions have changed so that segregation is no longer wise, this is a matter for the legislatures and not for the courts. The members of the judiciary have no more right to read their ideas of sociology into the Constitution than their ideas of economics.
It is argued that, because the school facilities furnished Negroes in District No. 22 are inferior to those furnished white persons, we should enjoin segregation rather than direct the equalizing of conditions. In as much as we think that the law requiring segregation is valid, however, and that the inequality suffered by plaintiffs results, not from the law, but from the way it has been administered, we think that our injunction should be directed to removing the inequalities resulting from administration within the framework of the law rather than to nullifying the law itself. As a court of equity, we should exercise our power to assure to plaintiffs the equality of treatment to which they are entitled with due regard to the legislative policy of the state. In directing that the school facilities afforded Negroes within the district be equalized promptly with those afforded white persons, we are giving plaintiffs all the relief that they can reasonably ask and the relief that is ordinarily granted in cases of this sort. See Carter v. County School Board of Arlington County, Virginia, 4 Cir., 182 F.2d 531. The court should not use its power to abolish segregation in a state where it is required by law if the equality demanded by the Constitution can be attained otherwise. This much is demanded by the spirit of comity which must prevail in the relationship between the agencies of the federal government and the states if our constitutional system is to endure.
Decree will be entered finding that the constitutional and statutory provisions re quiring segregation in the public schools are not of themselves violative of the Fourteenth Amendment, but that defendants have denied to plaintiffs rights guaranteed by that amendment in failing to furnish for Negroes in School District 22 educational facilities and opportunities equal to those furnished white persons, and injunction will issue directing defendants promptly to furnish Negroes within the district educational facilities and opportunities equal to those furnished white persons and to report to the court within six months as to the action that has been taken by them to effectuate the court's decree.
Injunction to abolish segregation denied.
Injunction to equalize educational facilities granted.
. Article 11, section 7 of the Constitution of South Carolina is as follows: "Separate schools shall be provided for children of the white and colored races, and no child of either race shall ever be permitted to attend a school provided for children of the other race."
Section 5377 of tbe Code of Laws of South Carolina of 1942 is as follows: "It shall be unlawful for pupils of one race to attend the schools provided by boards of trustees for persons of another race."
. Statistical Summary of Education, 1947-48, "Biennial Survey of Education in the United States, 1946-48", ch. 1, pp. 8, 40 (Federal Security Agency, Office of Education).
. See also Roberts v. City of Boston, 5 Cush., Mass., 198, decided prior to the Fourteenth Amendment.
. See also, Hast v. Van Deman & Lewis Co., 240 U.S. 342, 357, 36 S.Ct. 370, 60 L.Ed. 679; Borden's Farm Products Co. v. Baldwin, 293 U.S. 194, 209, 55 S.Ct. 187, 79 L.Ed. 281; Metropolitan Casualty Ins. Co. v. Brownell, 294 U.S. 580, 584, 55 S.Ct. 538, 79 L.Ed. 1070; State Board of Tax Com'rs v. Jackson, 283 U.S. 527, 537, 51 S.Ct. 540, 75 L.Ed. 1248; Lindsley v. Natural Carbonic Gas Co., 220 U.S. 61, 78, 31 S.Ct. 337, 55 L. Ed. 369; Alabama State Federation of Labor v. McAdory, 325 U.S. 450, 465, 65 S.Ct. 1384, 89 L.Ed. 1725; Asbury Hospital v. Cass County, N.D., 326 U.S. 207, 215, 66 S.Ct. 61, 90 L.Ed. 6; Carmichael v. Southern Coal & Coke Co., 301 U.S. 495, 509, 57 S.Ct. 868, 81 L.Ed. 1245; South Carolina Power Co. v. South Carolina Tax Com'n, 4 Cir., 52 F.2d 515, 518; United States v. Carolene Products Co., 304 U.S. 144, 152, 58 S.Ct. 778, 82 L.Ed. 1234; Bowles v. American Brewery, 4 Cir., 146 F.2d 842, 847; White Packing Co. v. Robertson, 4 Cir., 89 F.2d 775, 779.