Court Opinion

ID: 9808982
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:57:25.023363+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:23:16.132525
License: Public Domain

BRowN, J.,
dissenting: The question presented by this appeal is the validity of the bonds issued under chapter 345, Private Laws of 1911. This act of the General Assembly provides for the levying of an annual tax for the purpose of building a school building for the whites, and authorizes borrowing the money necessary to construct such building and directs that the special annual tax be applied to the payment of such debt. It is very important to bear in mind that there is no tax levied or debt authorized to be contracted for the maintenance of any schools, white or colored.
Nor does the act provide for the building of a colored schoolhouse, for none is needed. So far as the record shows, the colored race is already provided with a suitable and sufficient school building, but the whites are not.
*41Tbis point bas never before been decided in tbis State,.and I tbink tbe Court bas misapplied tbe former decisions of tbis Court. If tbe act provided for tbe levying of a special tax for tbe sole maintenance and support of tbe white schools to tbe exclusion of tbe colored, then I should say it discriminated against tbe colored race, and would be a violation of Art. IX, sec. 2, of our State Constitution.
Tbis section reads as follows: “Tbe General Assembly, at its first session under tbis Constitution, shall provide by taxation and otherwise for a general and uniform system of public schools, wherein tuition shall be free of charge to all the children of tbe State between tbe ages of six and twenty-one years. And tbe children of tbe white race and tbe children of tbe colored race shall be taught in separate public schools; but there shall be no discrimination in favor of or to tbe prejudice of either race.” We find in tbis section tbe peremptory mandate of tbe Constitution that tbe children of tbe white race and tbe children of tbe colored race shall be taught in separate public schools.
How is tbis to be accomplished unless separate school buildings can be provided necessary for tbe accommodation of each race?
When tbe General Assembly is commanded to see to it that tbe two races are taught in separate public schools, it is certainly invested by necessary implication with tbe power to give effect to that command by providing for tbe erection of suitable buildings for each race.
It is not obliged to provide for buildings for each race at tbe same time and in tbe same enactment. It may provide for a building at one session for tbe white race and at its next session for tbe colored race, or tbe latter may be already provided for.
Certainly there is no discrimination apparent in tbe act, because a white school building is a ■ constitutional necessity in which tbe colored race can have no share or’ interest.
It surely cannot be contended that every time a white schoolhouse is built a colored schoolhouse must also be erected, regardless of tbe needs of the two races. We have repeatedly affirmed tbe doctrine that “Courts will not adjudge an act of tbe Legis*42lature invalid unless its violation of the Constitution is clear, complete, and unmistakable.” This is the language of Mr. Black quoted with approval in Bonitz v. School Trustees, 154 N. C., 379.
As the colored race in South Mills Township, Camden County, to which this act applies, is doubtless already provided with a school building suitable to its needs (no complaint is made that they are not), and as the white race evidently is not so provided, I think it was the duty of the General Assembly to provide for the erection of a suitable building. That is all that this legislation ’undertakes to do, and there is nothing discriminatory on its face. The fact that the Legislature did not provide the means in the same enactment for the erection at same time of a colored school building should be conclusive that none is needed for that race.