Court Opinion

ID: 9442444
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 18:48:37.964147+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:28:12.913077
License: Public Domain

EDGERTON, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
In September 1947 appellant Marguerite Carr was one of 1,638 pupils in Browne Junior High School, the rated capacity of which was 888 by the standards of the Board of Education and 783 by those of disinterested experts.1 The school had been for many years so overcrowded that it was on a two-shift schedule.2 Appellant complained to school authorities of the fact that she was not receiving the full-time schooling that the school law and regulations require.3 She asked to 'be transferred to Eliot, a junior high school not far away which operated on a single shift and had vacancies. The Board of Education admits only white pupils to Eliot and Marguerite 'Carr is colored. Her request was therefore denied.
In October 1947 she brought a class action4 on behalf of 'herself and “all other Negro children of school age of the District of 'Columbia” complaining that the Board’s segregation policy deprives her and the others of the equal schooling to which they are entitled and asking that the appellees, the Board of Educátion and the Superintendent of Schools, be “enjoined to permit the Plaintiff and those on whose behalf she sues to enroll in and attend the school most adjacent to her and their horiies in which the courses of education required and prescribed -by law and the regulations of the Defendants are offered without regard to the previous or present use or designation of such school on account of the race or color of the students enrolled therein.” The prayer for relief is independent of whatever particular schools appellant or others were then attending or might be attending at any later time. It does not even mention any school. It makes a broad and direct attack on compulsory racial segregation in the public schools óf the District of Columbia. Marguerite Carr appeals from an order of December 22, 1947 granting summary judgment to the appellees.
Meanwhile, in November and December, 1947, the Board of Education had begun to eliminate the double shift at Browne Junior High School; not, as requested, by *23transferring -pupils from Browne to a while junior high school, 'but by transferring elementary pupils from white elementary schools to Eliot and to Eastern, a white senior high school, and putting many Browne Junior High School pupils in the vacated elementary buildings. These buildings lack important junior high school facilities.
In January 1948 the Browne Parent-Teachers Association, with two Browne pupils and their parents, all of whom are appellants here, brought a class action to enjoin appellees from assigning junior high school pupils to elementary school buildings and to require them “to permit the plaintiff pupils and others similarly situated to enroll in and attend the junior high school which will guarantee to them equal educational opportunities, facilities and equipment as are afforded white junior high school students.” The complaint shows that Browne, the other colored junior high schools, and the colored senior high schools are greatly overcrowded while Eliot, the other white junior high schools, and the white senior high schools have much surplus space. It alleges that Browne junior high school students assigned to elementary buildings are “denied any proper instruction in music, art, typewriting, home economics, woodshop, printshop, and metal-shop or other vocational skills such as is provided white junior high students.” In February 1948 the plaintiffs filed as an exhibit a table furnished by the Public Schools of the District of Columbia, Office of the Statistician, which shows the -following facts among others:
Capacity Enrollment 1946-1947 Oct. 9, 1947
Browne Junior High School (Colored)----888 1,836
Eliot Junior High School (white)............. 918 765
All colored junior high schools ............. 6,510 8,420
All white junior high schools ............. 12,033 10,303
Capaeity Enrollment 1946-1947 Oct. 9, 1947
Cardozo High School (colored) ........... 1,040 1,630
Eastern High School (white)............. 2,726 1,725
Central High School (white)............. 2,400 1,538*
All colored senior high schools ............. 3,732 4,680
All white senior high schools ............. 15,649 10,877
^Includes 501 veterans.
In March 1948 the District Court granted appellees’ motion to dismiss appellants’ complaint, on the ground that no violation of law or abuse of .discretion was shown.
When these appeals were argued counsel informed the court that Browne Junior High School was no longer on a shift schedule and that Marguerite Carr was no longer at Browne but was attending Cardozo, a colored senior high school, on a shift schedule.
Much additional information has since 'become available. In 1948 -Congress appropriated $100,000 “-for a complete survey of the public-school system of the District of Columbia with respect to the adequacy of the present plant and personnel, as well as educational methods and practices, to serve the District, said survey to be conducted under the supervision of a person qualified by training and experience in the field of public-school education to be appointed by the chairmen of the subcommittees on District of Columbia appropriations of the respective appropriations committees of the Senate and the House of Representatives * * *.”5 Between July 1, 1948 and February 28, 1949 this statutory survey was made and a report of 980 pages was prepared -by George D. Strayer, Professor Emeritus of Education in Teachers College of Columbia University, and a staff -of 22 specialists. The report, -commonly called the Strayer report,6 was published in the *24spring of 1949. The data it contains are “available data * * * of which we may take judicial notice * * *.”7 The Supreme Court has said: “We have frequently held that in the exercise of our appellate jurisdiction we have power not only to correct error in the judgment under review but to make such disposition of the case as justice requires. And in determining what justice does require, the Court is bound to- consider any change, either in fact or in law, which 'has supervened since the judgment was entered.”8
Appellees contend the facts do not amount to denial of substantially equal schooling. The facts themselves are not in dispute. Those stated in the Strayer report-are more recent and much 'fuller than those dealt with in the record and briefs but do not differ from them materially in any other respect. The result of these appeals should -be the same without the Strayer report as with it. The records in these cases show great inequalities between white and colored schools, including use by many Browne pupils of elementary buildings that are grossly inadequate for junior high school purposes, a great shortage of space in the colored junior and senior high schools, and a large surplus o:f space in the white junior and senior high schools.
Since appellant Carr’s class action was -brought on behalf of all Negro children of school age in the District of Columbia, lack of equal schooling at any Negro school in the District was pertinent to the actio-n when it was brought and is still pertinent. Since -colored students wh-o would be allowed to attend Eastern High School if they were white are excluded from Eastern and required to attend -Cardozo High School, to the extent of the difference between Eastern and Cardozo they are denied equal schooling because of their color. Since colored pupils who would be allowed to attend Eliot J-unior High School if they were white are excluded from Eliot and some of them are required to attend Browne Junior High School, to the extent of the difference between Eliot and Browne they are denied equal schooling -because of their color. In each case the difference is great.
I. Inequality of Cardoso and Eastern high schools. Appellant -Carr and other •Cardozo students who -live in the far northeastern part of Washington, where there is -a large colored population but no -colored high school, -are handicapped by that fact even -before they reach school.9 The “normal travel distance for senior high school students” is one mile and a half.10 Colored *25students who live near Eastern have to travel three or four miles to Cardozo. Appellant Carr’s residence is some 4 miles from ‘Cardozo and about li/£ miles from Eastern.
“In view of the fact that the modern secondary school program on both junior and senior high school levels includes responsibility for the physical development and the recreational activity of the youth in this age group, the school site has become an important factor in meeting this responsibility— so important that the prevailing minimum standard advocated by authorities in the field and practiced by school systems where-ever possible is as follows: Senior high school minimum site, 20 acres. Junior high school minimum site, 15 acres.”11 “The school plant must provide physical facilities, rooms and equipment, essential to healthful living. This will include indoor and outdoor physical facilities for healthful play and recreation. * * * In addition to its impact on the safety, health and development of children and youth in school, the physical plant including building, grounds, and equipment plays a major role in facilitating teaching and learning. It matters not how well trained, how well paid or how devoted the teachers may be, the degree to which they can achieve their best work is conditioned by the fitness of the rooms, the equipment, the apparatus and the materials they have with which to work.” Without good buildings and equipment “children and youth are denied the kind of education they need and society is denied the complete development of the kind of 'citizen it needs.”12
Their exclusion from Eastern High School handicaps Cardozo sudents in these respects. Eastern has a site of 11.7 acres. Cardozo has a site of less than one acre. Cardozo is closely hemmed in on all sides by streets. It has no playground or recreational facilities.13 Eastern has a modern building. The Cardozo plant was built about 1905. It ,was abandoned as a white “business” 'high school in 1931.14 On a thousand-point scale the Eastern plant rates 764 in “educational adequacy.” The Cardozo plant rates 371.15 Dr. Strayer told an appropriations subcommittee that two of the three colored high schools, Cardozo and Armstrong, should be abandoned: “They would not be accepted at any community that I know of in the United States as satisfactory buildings.” 16
At least since 1938, Cardozo students have been badly handicapped by overcrowding. The capacity of their building by Strayer standards is 845. Its enrollment ranged from 1,341 in 1938 to 1,721 in 1948.17 “The cafeteria has a capacity for only 248 people -at one sitting, approximately one-sixth of the enrollment of the school. The library can accommodate at one time only 84 pupils. The gymnasium, dressing room and shower facilities are extremely limited. The assembly hall seats but one-fourth of the enrollment. School functions are being carried on in basement rooms, corridors, assembly hall, sidewalks and public highway. Fire protection throughout the building is extremely inadequate.”18 At least since 1942 Eastern, on the 'other hand, has -not been occupied to anything like its Strayer capacity, 2,215,19 which in turn is 511 less than its capacity by appellees’ standards.20 Its enrollment in October 1948 was 1,526.21 Its surplus capacity was 689 while Cardozo’s surplus enrollment was 876.
The overcrowding at Cardozo involves, among other handicaps absent at Eastern, a triple shift22 and greatly oversized class*26es. “There is widespread agreement that for the best results in teaching, classes in the regular subjects in junior and senior high schools should not ordinarily exceed 30 pupils. Many school administrators feel that the maximum should be lower.” 23 At Eastern the median sized class in 1948 was 30. At Cardozo, despite the triple shift, the median sized class was 36.5. In all eight white high schools there were only 55 classes larger than 39; at Cardozo alone there were 92 such classes. At Eastern there were two classes of between 40 and 44 and none larger than 44. At Cardozo there were 65 classes of between 40 and 44, 20 of between 45 and 49, and 7 of over 50.24
Students at Cardozo are handicapped by omission from their curriculum of practical subjects taught at Eastern. “All of the white general high schools offer homemaking instruction to the extent of the following credits : Anacostia, 7; Central, 6; Coolidge, 7; Eastern, 6; McKinley, 7; Roosevelt, 4; Western, 1; and Wilson, 6. These credits are distributed over such subject matter as clothing and textiles, child care, food and dietetics, home management, home nursing, home living, and general homemaking.”25 Armstrong, the colored technical high school, offers 10 credits in homemaking courses, but the two non-technical colored high schools, Cardozo and Dunbar, “have no work in this field. This is particularly unfortunate in view of the fact that the less privileged the pupils, the relatively greater are both the economic and psychological values of such practical arts education.”26 Similarly, all white high schools offer credits in manual arts., Eastern has 20 such credits. Dunbar has 4. Cardozo has none. “Again it would seem, that the economic and'psychological values of education in the practical arts are denied to those who need them most.” 27
Students at Cardozo are handicapped in guidance and counseling. Although the greater teaching load in the colored high schools28 reduces the extent to which regular classroom teachers can participate in guidance, in 1948 only one guidance counselor was provided for the 1,721 students at Cardozo. Two were provided for the 1,526 students at Eastern.29
I have compared Cardozo with the white high school nearest the homes of appellant Carr and other named appellants. The Strayer report shows that the contrast between Cardozo and any one of the other white high schools is quite as striking. While Cardozo has a site of less than one acre and is hemmed in by streets, Central, the white high school nearest Cardozo, has a site of 9 acres.30 Cardozo has an educational adequacy rating of 371, Central of 708.31 The median size of classes at Central was 25.9, at Cardozo 36.5.32 On October 22, 1948, while Cardozo enrolled 1,721 senior high school students and had a space shortage of 876, Central enrolled 893 senior high school students and 544 junior high school students and still had a space surplus of 513.33 “Despite the fact that the boundaries of [Central’s] home area have been extended far into the normal home area of the Roosevelt and McKinley where heavy surplus capacity now exists (Roosevelt 655 and McKinley 705) Central still fails to utilize its plant or hold enough students for economic operation of its educational program. A circle of 1% miles radius, the normal travel distance for senior high school students, extends beyond the locations of both the Roosevelt and the McKinley.” 34
II. Inequality of Browne and Eliot junior high schools. Ending the double shift at Browne did not make Browne equal to Eliot. Appellees concede “that the absence of assembly halls, cafeterias and gymnasi*27ums in the Blow and Webb [elementary] Schools will require the curtailment of some of the socialization activities” which are “cardinal features of the junior high school program.” The Strayer report shows that although the capacity of the Browne building is only 783, in October 1948 the colored junior high school population of the Browne area, housed either in the Browne building or in elementary buildings, was 2,498.35 At Eliot, on the other hand, capacity exceeded enrollment. In October 1949 the Browne building still housed 396 pupils in excess of capacity, even by Board of Education standards, and 471 other Browne pupils were housed in Blow and Webb elementary buildings.36 Even after the opening of the ex-eellent Kelly-Miller colored junior high school in December 1949 and the removal of junior high school students from elementary schools, students of Browne are still at a disadvantage if appellees’ advance estimates prove correct, lhose estimates indicated a colored junior high school population in the Browne area of 2,550 in September 1949. On the Strayer basis the capacity of the Kelly-Miller school is 1,-OOO,37 which makes the combined capacity of Kelly-Miller and Browne 1,783. The necessary result is either great overcrowd-mg in one or both of these schools, or use of elementary buildings that lack necessary facilities for junior high school students.38 The Strayer report recommends expendíture of $920,000 for needed expansion at Browne.39 There is no overcrowding at Eliot.
As stated above, “There is widespread agreement that for the best results in teaching, classes in the regular subjects in junior and senior high schools should not ordinarily exceed 30 pupils.” 40 At Eliot the median sized class was 32.2. At Browne it was 39.4, an excess over recognized standards of 30 per cent and over, Eliot of 22 per cent, While Eliot had 19 classes of between 40’ and 44 pupils, Browne had 95 such classes. Eliot had no classes larger than 44. Browne had 20 Classes of between 45 and 49, and 8 between 50 and 54.41
III. Inequality of the white and colored public school systems of the District of Columbia. Throughout the public school system, Negro children are denied equal schooling because of their color,
“Thousands of children in the District of Columbia are handicapped in their educational development by being enrolled in oversize classes.” 42 This handicap and the related one of overburdened teachers are much greater in colored schools than in white. Table II shows that in 1948 the median-sized classes were nearly one-fifth larger in colored than in white junior high schools and more than one-fifth larger in colored than in white senior high schools, There were nearly one-sixth more pupils per teacher in colored than in white junior high schools and fully one-sixth more pupils per teacher in colored than in white senior high schools. The teaching load (pupil hours per week per teacher) was more than one-fifth greater in colored than in white junior high schools and nearly one-fourth *28greater in colored than in white senior high schools.
The greater overcrowding of colored classes and overloading of colored teachers begins in kindergarten. In 1948 10.7% of the classes in white kindergartens and 17.2% of those in colored kindergartens enrolled between 36 and 40 children; 2.3% of the white classes and 11.7% of the colored enrolled over 45.43 In white kindergartens the ratio of pupils to teachers was 51.5, in colored kindergartens 59.7.44 Half the colered children of kindergarten age were not in school. It would require 52 more teachers to provide for them.45
In white elementary schools, grades 1 to 6, less than one per cent (.3%) of the classes enrolled more than 40 children each and no class enrolled more than 45. But in the colored elementary schools 43.6% of the classes enrolled more than 40 children each and 13.8% enrolled more than 45.46 “About 130 additional classes would be required to reduce the class size” in colored elementary schools “to an equality” with that in white elementary schools.47 In regular classes in elementary schools, grades 1 to 6, the ratio of white pupils to teachers was 32.5, the ratio of colored pupils to teachers 37.9.48
There is great disparity in number and distribution of schools ■ and classrooms. Though colored and white enrollment in elementary schools, including kindergarten and ungraded classes, was approximately equal in 1948, there were 73 elementary schools with 919 classrooms for white children and only 49 elementary schools with 693 classrooms for colored children.49 For half the colored children of lcindergarten age no classrooms were available. It would require 26 more classrooms to provide for them.50 Dr. Strayer told the appropriations subcommittee that the proportion of children of kindergarten age who attend kindergarten “is very much lower among the Negro children than it is among the white, and I take it that that is pretty certainly because the facilities are not available.” 51 In the twelve school areas in which, there were both white and colored elementary schools, there was an over-all surplus of space for over 1,600 white children and an over-all shortage of space for over 5,200 colored children.52 With almost identical numbers of white and colored junior-high school students,' there were 11 white and 7 colored junior high school buildings.53 White junior high schools had surplus space for 679 pupils, while colored junior high schools were used 2,372 beyond their capacity.54 For 9,654 white senior high school students there were 8 buildings; for 4,555 colored there were 3. In October 1948, enrollment in colored senior high schools exceeded the capacity of the buildings by 1,523 pupils.55 The white senior high schools had space for 3,062 more students than were enrolled.56 If any two of these white schools had been turned over to colored students, or closed, all white high school students could have been accommodated, without crowding, in the other six white high schools. Appellee Superintendent of Schools himself told the appropriations subcommittee that “the increased colored population has caused so much overcrowding in the colored high schools that their accreditation is in danger.”57 The-white senior high schools are so well distributed that there is one within a moderate-*29distance of every student.58 All three colored senior high schools are within a few blocks of each other in the congested central part of the city, and many students have to travel 3 or 4 miles to reach them.59
“Where buildings have been recently constructed, those occupied by colored children are as good as those occupied by white children.” 60 But there is great disparity in age and quality between white school buildings as a whole and colored school buildings as a whole. 42.4% of the white and 58.4% of the colored elementary buildings were over 40 years old in 1948.61 The Strayer report recommended abandonment of 40 classrooms used by white children and 110 used by colored children.62 Nearly half the white but only a quarter of the colored elementary school buildings had educational adequacy scores above 500 on the basis of 1000. About a quarter of the buildings used by white elementary pupils and more than a third of those used by colored elementary pupils scored below 300.63 Of buildings (including some elementary buildings) occupied by junior high school students, 10 white and 5 colored were built within the past thirty years; 2 white and 6 colored are over 40 years old.64 Of the colored junior high school plants, 3 rated above and 4 below 500 on a scale of 1000; of the white junior high school plants, 9 rated above and 2 below 500.65 All 8 of the white senior high school plants rated above 600, all but 2 above 700; all 3 of the colored senior high school plants rated below 500.66 The worst white was better than the best colored senior high school.
The Strayer survey estimated needed expenditures for white elementary school buildings at $4,623,000 and for colored elementary school buildings at $9,874,500. For senior, vocational, and junior high schools the Strayer estimates of need were $5,065,-5001 for the white and $20,590,500 for the colored.67
The disparity between white and colored high schools in home-making and manual arts courses has been pointed out in connection with Eastern and Cardozo.
Colored students in need of special services (visiting instructors, speech correction, remedial reading, lip reading, and individual child study) are severely handicapped in comparison with white children of like needs. In 1947-48 such services were furnished .to 3,431 white children by 43 workers and 3 special supervisors. They were furnished to 4,031 colored children by 15 workers and 1 special supervisor.68 In “ungraded” classes for children not adjusted to the standard curriculum there were in October 1948, 1,145 children in white elementary schools, 474 in colored elementary schools.69
Colored pupils generally “have more serious and numerous problems of social and vocational adjustment” than white pupils and therefore need more guidance and counseling.70 They actually get less. In the elementary schools the classroom teacher is the counselor. Since elementary teachers are burdened with larger classes in the colored schools than in the white they can of course give less attention to the problems of individual children. Special counselors are provided in junior, vocational, and senior high schools, but in great disproportion as between the white and colored schools. “In 1946, the over-all ratio of pupils to counselor was reported as 390 to 1 in the white schools, and 690 to 1 in the Negro schools.” 71
Speaking specifically of the public schools of the District of Columbia, the President’s Committee on Civil Rights said in 1947: “Negro schools are inferior to white schools in almost every respect. The *30white school buildings have a capacity which is 27 percent greater than actual enrollment. In the colored schools, enrollment exceeds building capacity by eight percent. Classes in the Negro schools are considerably larger and the teaching load of the Negro teachers considerably heavier. Less than one percent of all white school children, but over 15 percent of colored children, receive only part-time instruction. Similar inequalities exist in school buildings, equipment, textbook supplies, kindergarten classes, athletic, and recreational facilities.” 72 The Strayer report is more recent as well as specific.
IV. Unccmstitutionality of racial discrimination in public schools. It is plain that pupils represented in these appeals are denied better schooling and given worse because of their color. This the Constitution forbids. “Distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality. For that reason, legislative classification or discrimination based on race alone has often been held to be a denial of equal protection.” 73 “Discriminations based on race alone are obviously irrelevant and invidious”74 and therefore .arbitrary and unreasonable. Their imposition upon any citizen by any agency of government is reconcilable neither with due process of law75 nor with the equal protection of the laws.76
The Supreme Court has applied this general principle to public education in a number of familiar cases.77 The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has recently applied it as between segregated high schools.78 The leading cases have been based on the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, which is not directly applicable in the District of Columbia. The Fifth Amendment, which is directly applicable here, contains no equal protection clause. But the Supreme Court has held that governmentally enforced racial discrimination in housing violates not only the equal protection clause79 but also the due process clause80 of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Court has repeatedly indicated that arbitrary and injurious discrimination may violate the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment.81 As long ago as 1896 the Court said “the Constitution * * * forbids, so far as civil and political rights are concerned, discrimination by the General Government, or by the States, against any citizen because of his race.” 82
It is said there are not enough vacancies in the better schools for all pupils. This is no. answer to these complaints of racial discrimination. As long as good schools cannot accommodate all, the pupils who attend them may be chosen on any reasonable basis, including proximity, intelligence, and conduct. They may not be *31chosen for the color of their hair or their skin.
Appellees say in effect: (1) We try to avoid discrimination against colored pupils,83 but (2) the rapid growth of the colored population, its location, its movement, and the war, have made this impossible; yet (3) in general, we do avoid discrimination against colored pupils. The first proposition is immaterial except as it tends to support the second, for the question is not whether appellees have good intentions but whether appellants have equal schooling. The second proposition supports appellants’ case, not appellees’, for the more clearly segregation precludes equality the more clearly it must go. The third proposition contradicts not only the second but the facts, and would not conclude the rights of any pupil even if it were true. It may be that the same segregated system which discriminates against most colored pupils discriminates, or has sometimes discriminated, against some white pupils. But in the restrictive covenant case, as in others, the Supreme Court pointed out that the rights created by the Fourteenth Amendment “are, by its terms, guaranteed to the individual. The rights established are personal rights. It is, therefore, no answer to these petitioners to say that the courts may also be induced to deny white persons rights * * * on grounds of race or color. Equal protection of the laws is not achieved through indiscriminate imposition of inequalities.”84 This is also true of the right to due process of law created by the Fifth Amendment. While many children are handicapped in their schooling because of their race it is no defense to say that some children of the same race are not, and some children of a different race are, so handicapped.
Two railroad cars may be, in themselves, exactly alike. But two schools are seldom if ever fully equal to each other in location, environment, space, age, equipment, size of classes, and faculty. Therefore it follows from the mere number of public schools, at every level, in the District of Columbia that discrimination against many individual pupils of one race or the other because of their race cannot be avoided while segregation is maintained. In other words objective equality, which is clearly required, cannot here be attained without abolishing segregation. The appellees should therefore be required to cease to exclude any pupil from any school because of color.
*32V. Unconstitutionality, of racial segregation in public schools. If it be assumed that objective equality could be attained, the question whether enforced segregation in public schools would then be valid becomes one upon which the Supreme Court has never squarely ruled, although the Court has repeatedly spoken of segregation as valid.85 Since Plessy v. Ferguson,86 enforced segregation in travel has been upheld as “reasonable,” though it is now under attack by the United States.87 But the Supreme Court held over thirty years ago that an ordinance forbidding Negroes to move into predominantly white city blocks and whites to move into predominantly Negro city blocks was a denial of due process of law.88 The Court thereby recognized that enforced racial segregation in housing is arbitrary and cannot reasonably be thought to serve a public purpose. I submit that enforced racial segregation in schooling is even more arbitrary. Instead of serving a public purpose it fosters prejudice and obstructs the education of whites and Negroes by endorsing prejudice and preventing mutual acquaintance. Adults are not restricted in their contacts to people who live in the same block, but many children are practically restricted in their contacts to children who attend the same school. The education required for living in a cosmopolitan community, and especially for living in a humane and democratic country and promoting its ideals, cannot be obtained on either side of a fence that separates a more privileged majority and a less privileged minority. Segregation in travel is intermittent and affects chiefly adults. Segregation in colleges and universities affects young people whose patterns of feeling and behavior have been formed. But segregation in public schools affects children during their formative years and does so continually.
It also affects them unequally. Here at least, as a current brief for the United States says of segregation in general, “ ‘separate but equal’ is as much a contradiction in terms as ‘black but white’: facilities which are segregated by law solely on the basis of race or color, cannot in any real sense be regarded as equal.”89 It is notorious that segregated colored schooling is never equal to segregated white schooling in objectively measurable ways.90 Independently of objective differences between white and colored schooling, school segregation means discrimination against Negroes for two distinct reasons. (1) By preventing a dominant majority and a depressed minority from learning each other’s ways, school segregation inflicts a greater economic and social handicap on the minority than on the majority. It aggravates the disadvantages of Negroes and helps to preserve their subordinate status. (2) School segregation is humiliating to Negroes. Courts have *33sometimes denied that segregation implies inferiority. This amounts to saying, in the face of the obvious fact of racial prejudice,91 that the whites who impose segregation do not consider Negroes inferior. One might as well say that the whites who apply insulting epithets to Negroes do not consider them inferior. Not only words but acts mean what they are intended and understood to mean. Segregation of the Czar of Russia meant that others were not thought fit to associate with him. Segregation of a depressed minority means that it is not thought fit to associate with others. Both whites and Negroes know that enforced racial segregation in schools exists because the people who impose it consider colored children unfit to associate with white children. As the President’s Committee on Civil Rights said of the “separate but equal” policy in general, it “brands the Negro with the mark of inferiority and asserts that he is not fit to associate with white people. * * * No argument or rationalization can alter this basic fact: a law which forbids a group of American citizens to associate with other citizens in the ordinary course of daily living creates inequality by imposing a caste status on the minority group.”92 One of the recommendations of the President’s Committee was that Congress prohibit segregation in the public schools of the District of Columbia.93 In my opinion the Constitution does not permit courts to wait for Congress to act.
Appellees say that Congress requires them to maintain segregation. The President’s Committee concluded that congressional legislation “assumes the fact of segregation but nowhere makes it mandatory.” 94 I think the question irrelevant, since legislation cannot affect appellants’ constitutional rights.
When the Fifth Amendment was adopted Negroes in the District of Columbia were slaves, not entitled to unsegregated schooling or to any schooling. Congress may have been right in thinking Negroes were not entitled to unsegregated schooling when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted. But the question what schooling was good enough to meet their constitutional rights 160 or 80 years ago is different from the question what schooling meets their rights now. “It is of the very nature of a free society to advance in its standards of what is deemed reasonable and right. Representing as it does a living principle, due process is not confined within a permanent catalogue of what may at a given time be deemed the limits of the essentials of fundamental rights.” 95
It is sometimes suggested that due process of law cannot require what law cannot enforce. No such suggestion is relevant here. When United States courts order integration of District of Columbia schools they will be Integrated. It has been too long forgotten that the District of Columbia is not a provincial community but the cosmopolitan capital of a nation that professes democracy.96

*34

*35

. Strayer report, infra note 6, p. 343; p. 300.

, Pupils in the morning session attended from 8:00 a. m. to 12:30 p. m., those in the afternoon session from 12:45 to 5:15 p. m. They had 4 hours and 5 minutes of school time and 23, minutes for lunch, a total of 4% hours. During the winter it was the practice to drop the last period of the afternoon session so that pupils might get home before dark. This reduced actual instruction time to 3 hours 25 minutes and the over-all school day to 3 hours and 40 minutes. Classes were 40 minuutes long at Browne and 55 minutes long at other junior high schools. In single-session schools, 5 periods per week are available for clubs, supervised study, counseling and guidance, and after-school hours are available for extended activities. This was not the case at Browne.

. An Act of Congress provides that “All children of school age being instructed in the schools of the District beyond the second grade shall be given a whole school-day session.” D.C.Code (1040) § 31 — 1101. “The session of day junior high schools shall begin at 9:00 o’clock A.M. and close at 3:00 P.M.” Rules and Regulations of the Board of Education, Chap. 13, § 5.

. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Rule 23, 28 U.S.C.A.

. 62 Stat. 542.

. “Report of a Survey of the Public Schools of the District of Columbia Conducted Under the Auspices of the Chairmen of the Subcommittees on District of Columbia Appropriations of the Respective Appropriations Committees of *24the Senate and House of Representatives.” Washington, Government Printing Office, 1949.

. Parker v. Brown, 317 U.S. 341, 363, cf. pp. 364-368, 63 S.Ct. 307, 319, 320, 322, 87 L.Ed. 315. “The -principal statistical sources” of the information the Supreme Court used were publications of the United States Tariff Commission and the Department of Agriculture. The court does not deny that Negro schooling in the District of Columbia is greatly inferior to white schooling. The court refuses to consider the question because the Strayer report has not been formally introduced. This is, I think, substantially like denying credit to a publication of the Census Bureau or the Weather Bureau. Parker v. Brown shows that the court errs. Moreover, refusal to notice the facts disclosed by the Strayer report serves no useful purpose. Pacts need only be proved by a preponderance of evidence, but the substantial correctness of the essential Strayer figures is beyond reasonable doubt. They are not merely undisputed hut necessarily taken from appellees’ own records. If appellees should wish to dispute any of them, which is unlikely, they could do so in a petition for rehearing. Xet the court is ruling in effect that appellants must go through the ritual of a now trial and a new appeal in order that they may formally present official statistics. This seems to me one of the “needless failures of justice that are caused by the artificial impotence of judicial proceedings” when courts fail to make libex-al use of the principle of judicial notice. 9 Wigmore, Evidence § 2583 (3d ed. 1940).

. Patterson v. State of Alabama, 294 U.S. 600, 607, 55 S.Ct. 575, 578, 79 L.Ed. 1082.

. Maps, Strayer 334, 338; cf. 332

. Strayer 333.

. Strayer 321.

. Strayer 298.

. Strayer 332, 337, 339.

. Strayer 339.

. Strayer 332, 337.

. Senate subcommittee on appropriations, 19,49, Hearings on H.II.jSTo. 3082, District of Columbia Appropriations Bill for 1950, p. 60.

. Strayer 545, 337.

. Strayer 339-340.

. Strayer 545.

. Table I infra.

. Strayer 332.

. Statement of Dr. Corning, Hearings, supra note 16, p. 57, June 1949; Washington Evening Star, Sept. 12, 1949.

. Strayer 623.

. Strayer 624.

. Strayer 607-608.

. Strayer 608.

. Strayer 609.

. Table II infra.

. Strayer 612, 701.

. Strayer 333, 337, 339.

. Strayer 332, 337.

. Strayer 624.

. Strayer 333, 332, 337.

. Strayer 333.

. Table I infra.

. Washington Evening Star, Oct. 28, 1949.
Differences in capacity as measured by Strayer standards and by Board standards are not differences in regard to facts. They are differences of opinion as to what “percent utilization of instruetional pupil stations’’ is proj)er. (Strayer 300) They have no bearing on the issues in this case. Both by Strayer standards and by Board standards the capacity of Eliot, Eastern, Central, white senior high schools, and white junior high schools ex-eeeds their enrollment and the capacity of Browne, Cardozo, colored senior high schools, and colored junior high schools is less than their enrollment.

. Strayer 345.

. “School officials said 1,294 .students will be transferred to the new building which has a capacity of 1,440” on the Board of Education basis. Washington Post, Dec. 1, 1949. Even this would leave 1,250 at Browne if the Board of Education’s advaneo estimate of enrollment in the area was correct. It would mean serious overcrowding, by Strayer standards, both at Browne and at Kelly-Miller,

 strayer 376

. Strayer 623.

 _ Strayer 624.

 Strayer 941.

. Strayer 420.

. Strayer 48.

. Strayer 389, 420.

. Strayer 419.

. Strayer 420.

. Strayer 48.

. Strayer 323, 364 ; 329, 365; four additional elementary buildings were used by colored junior high school students. Strayer 299.

. Strayer 389.

. Supra note 16, at p. 70.

. Strayer 350 to 363.

. In October 1948 many colored junior bigli school students wore housed in elementary-school buildings. Strayer 340,. 343, 345.

. Strayer 340, 343.

. Strayer 337.

. Strayer 332.

. Supra note 16, at p. 58.

. Map, Strayer 384.

. Map, Strayer 338.

. Strayer 830.

. Strayer 299.

. Strayer 305-366.

. Strayer 326, 329.

. Strayer 299.

. Strayer 343, 340; Table II infra.

. Strayer 332, 337; Table II infra.

. Strayer 375-377.

. Strayer 508, 509.

. Strayer 48.

. Strayer 701.

. Strayer 701.

. To Secure These Rights (1947), p. 90.

. Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81, 100, 63 S.Ct. 1375, 1385, 87 L.Ed. 1774.

. Steele v. Louisville & Nashville Railroad Co., 323 U.S. 192, 203, 65 S.Ct. 226, 232, 89 L.Ed. 173.

. Buchanan v. Warley, 245 U.S. 60, 82, 38 S.Ct. 16, 62 L.Ed. 149, L.R.A.1918C, 210, Ann.Cas.1918A, 1201.

. Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1, 68 S.Ct. 836, 92 L.Ed. 1161, 3 A.L.R.2d 441.

. The leading case is Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, Registrar of the University of Missouri, 305 U.S. 337, 59 S.Ct. 232, 83 L.Ed. 208. Recent cases are Sipuel v. Board of Regents, 332 U.S. 631, 68 S.Ct. 299, 92 L.Ed. 247; Fisher v. Hurst, 333 U.S. 147, 68 S.Ct. 389, 92 L.Ed. 604.

. Corbin v. County School Board of Pulaski County, Va., 4 Cir., 177 F.2d 924.

. Shelley v. Kraemer, supra note 76.

. Buchanan v. Warley, supra note 75.

. Hirabayashi v. United States, supra note 73; Detroit Bank v. United States, 317 U.S. 329, 63 S.Ct. 297, 87 L.Ed. 304; Currin v. Wallace, 306 U.S. 1, 13-14, 59 S.Ct. 379, 83 L.Ed. 441; Steward Machine Co. v. Davis, 301 U.S. 548, 585, 57 S.Ct. 883, 81 L.Ed. 1279, 109 A.L.R. 1293.

. Gibson v. State of Mississippi, 162 U.S. 565, 591, 16 S.Ct. 904, 910, 40 L.Ed. 1075.

. E. g., they say expenditures are divided in a fair ratio between white and colored schools. This proposition is quite erroneous. They attempt to show fairness by comparing (1) the ratio of total expenditures for colored and white schools with (2) tlie ratio of colored to white children of school age in 1940. (The statute, D.C.Code (1940) § 31 — 1112, requires appellees to use this latter ratio -in allocating funds.) Obviously appellees’ comparison is much less enlightening than a comparison between (1) the ratio of expenditures for colored and white schools and (2) the ratio of colored to white pupils currently attending public schools. But when total expenditures are used, even this latter comparison is misleading, because of the shortage of colored school buildings and the relative abundance of white school buildings. Equal total per capita expenditures for one group that is already housed and another group that must, to a substantial extent, be housed out of the expenditures, do not indicate either equality of treatment or equality of education.
Between 1930 and 1948 colored enrollment in the public schools increased by about 60%, from 24,960 to 41,612, while white enrollment decreased slightly. (Strayer 308) Tablo II infra shows that much of the increase in colored enrollment took place between 1938 and 1948, and that there was a large decrease in white enrollment during this period. Table III infra compares tlie expenditures shown by the Superintendent’s affidavit of December 5, 1947 with school enrollment for 1947 — 48. This table shows that expenditures per white pupil for every item in the segregated budget, with the single exception of “capital outlay,” substantially exceeded expenditures per colored pupil. Omitting the “capita] outlay” expenditure, the per capita outlay for white pupils was almost one quarter greater than for colored pupils.

. Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1, 22, 68 S.Ct. 836, 846, 92 L.Ed. 1161, 3 A.L.R.2d 441.

. The cases are more or less distinguishable on their facts. E. g., Cumming v. Board of Education, 175 U.S. 528, 543, 20 S.Ct. 197, 44 L.Ed. 262, expressly disclaimed ruling on segregation; contrary to the later cases, it upheld denial of any high school education to Negroes. In Gong Lum v. Rice, 275 U.S. 78, 48 S.Ct. 91, 72 L.Ed. 172, the plaintiff’s contention, which the Court overruled, was that Chinese should be classified as white.

. 163 U.S. 537, 16 S.Ct. 1138, 41 L.Ed. 256, decided in 1896.

. Infra note 89.

. Buchanan v. Warley, 1917, 245 U.S. 60, 38 S.Ct. 16, 62 L.Ed. 149, L.R.A. 1918C, 210, Ann.Cas.l918A, 1201.

. Brief for the United States in Henderson v. United States, S.C.No. 25, Oct. Term, 1949, p. 12. [Probable jurisdiction noted, 69 S.Ct. 740],

. In education, “tbe separate and equal principle has nowhere been fully honored. Educational facilities for Negroes in segregated areas are inferior to those provided for whites. Whether one considers enrollment, over-all costs per student, teachers’ salaries, transportation facilities, availability of secondary schools, or opportunities for undergraduate and graduate study, the consequences of segregation are always the same, and always adverse to the Negro citizen. * * * This Commission concludes that there will be no fundamental correction of the total condition until segregation legislation is repealed.” Higher Eduction for American Democracy; Report of the President’s Committee on Higher Education, Yol. H (1947), pp. 31, 35.

. Courts have held it libelous to call a white man a Negro. Collins v. Oklahoma State Hospital, 76 Okl. 229, 184 P. 946, 947, 7 A.L.R. 895; Spencer v. Looney, 116 Va. 767, 82 S.E. 745; Spotorno v. Fourichon, 40 La.Ann. 423, 4 So. 71; Flood v. News Courier Co., 71 S.C. 112, 50 S.E. 637, 4 Ann.Cas. 685; Jones v. R. L. Polk & Co., 190 Ala. 243, 67 So. 577; Upton v. Times-Democrat Pub. Co., 104 La. 141, 28 So. 970; Hargrove v. Oklahoma Press Pub. Co., 130 Okl. 76, 265 P. 635; May v. Shreveport Traction Co., 127 La. 420, 53 So. 671, 674, 32 L.R.A.,N.S., 206.

. To Secure These Rights (1947), pp. 79, 82.

. Ibid., pp. 166, 171.

. Ibid., p. 90.

. Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U.S. 25, 27, 69 S.Ct. 1359, 1361.

. “I think it quite obvious * * * that the existence of discriminations against minority groups in the United States is a handicap in our relations with other countries.” Statement of Dean Acheson, then Acting Secretary of State, in a letter to the Fair Employment Practice Committee on May 8, 1946; quoted in To Secure These Rights, supra note 92, at 146-147.