Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

Justice Harlan dissented, saying that he was of the opinion that the Statute of Louisiana is inconsistent with personal liberty of white and black in that State and hostile to both in the letter and spirit of the Constitution of the United States. Justice Harlan rightly contended that laws can have no regard to race according to the Constitution. If they do, they conflict with the rights of State and national citizenship and with personal liberty. The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments removed race from our governmental system. But what has the court to do with the policy or expediency of legislation? "A statute may be valid, and yet upon grounds of public policy, may well be characterized as unreasonable." Accordingly Mr. Sedgwick, a distinguished authority, says: "The Courts have no other duty to perform than to execute the legislative will, without regard to their views as to the wisdom or justice of the particular enactment." "Statutes," said Justice Harlan, "must always have a reasonable construction. Sometimes they are to be construed strictly; sometimes, liberally, in order to carry out the legislative will. But, however construed, the intent of the legislature is to be respected."

The decisions in the cases of _M. K. and T. Railway_ v. _Haber_[36] and _Crutcher_ v. _Kentucky_,[37] are of some importance. In these cases the court reiterated the doctrine that the regulation of the enjoyment of the relative rights and the performance of the duties, of all persons within the jurisdiction of a State belong primarily to such a State under its reserved power to provide for the safety of all persons and property within its limits; and that even if the subject of such regulations be one that may be taken under the exclusive control of Congress, and be reached by national legislation, any action taken by the State upon that subject that does not directly interfere with rights secured by the Constitution of the United States or by some valid act of Congress, must be respected until Congress intervenes.[38] The court by this time, however, had all but held that the Constitution secured to the Negro no civil or political rights except that of exemption from involuntary servitude, and that law for the Negro is the will of the white man.

Further development of the doctrine as to the right of the State to deprive a Negro of citizenship is brought out in the _Lauder Case_.[39] The case was this: Lauder's wife purchased a first class ticket from Hopkinsville to Mayfield, both places within the State of Kentucky. She took her place in what was called the "ladies' coach" and was ejected therefrom by the conductor and assigned a seat in a smoking car, which was alleged to be small, badly ventilated, unclean and fitted with greatly inferior accommodations. This road ran from Evansville, Indiana, to Hopkinsville, Kentucky. It was held in the Court of Appeals that the decision of the United States Supreme Court in _Louisville, New Orleans and Railway_ v. _Mississippi_[40] and _Plessy_ v. _Ferguson_[41] was conclusive of the constitutionality of the act so far as the plaintiffs were concerned; and that the mere fact that the railroad extended to Evansville, in the State of Indiana, could in no wise render the statute in question invalid as to the duty of the railroad to respect it.

In the case of _Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Company_ v. _Kentucky_,[42] this doctrine was carried to its logical conclusion. The question was whether a proper construction of the separate car law confines its operation to passengers whose journeys commence and end within the boundaries of the State or whether a reasonable interpretation of the act requires Negro passengers to be assigned to separate coaches when traveling from or to points in other States. In other such cases the Supreme Court of the United States had interpreted the local law as applying only to interstate commerce. The language of the first section of the Kentucky statute made it very clear that it applied to all carriers. The first section of the Kentucky law follows:

"Any railroad company or corporation, person or persons, running
or otherwise operation of railroad cars or coaches by steam or
otherwise, in any railroad line or track within this State, and
all railroad companies, person or persons, doing business in this
State, whether upon lines or railroads owned in part or whole, or
leased by them; and all railroad companies, person or persons,
operating railroad lines that may hereafter be built under
existing charters, or charters that may hereafter be granted in
this State; and all foreign corporations, companies, person or
persons, organized under charters granted, or that may be
hereafter granted by any other State, who may be now, or may
hereafter be engaged in running or operating any of the railroads
of this State, whether in part or whole, are hereby required to
furnish separate coaches or cars for travel or transportation of
the white and colored passengers on their respective lines of
railroad."

Any sane man can see that this law undertook to regulate interstate commerce. Justice Brown, however, tried to square the opinion with that of the Kentucky Supreme Court, upholding the law on the grounds that it was constitutional in as much as it applied only to intrastate passenger traffic, although the law plainly applies also to interstate traffic.

Speaking further for the court, Justice Brown said: "Indeed we are by no means satisfied that the Court of Appeals did not give the correct construction to this statute in limiting its operation to domestic commerce. It is scarcely courteous to impute to a legislature the enactment of a law which it knew to be unconstitutional and if it were well settled that a separate coach law was unconstitutional, as applied to interstate commerce, the law applying on its face to _all_ passengers should be limited to such as the legislature were competent to deal with. The Court of Appeals has found such to be the intention of the General Assembly in this case, or at least, that if such were not its intention, the law may be supported as applying alone to domestic commerce. In thus holding the act to be severable it is laying down a principle of construction from which there is no appeal."

"While we do not deny the force of the railroad's argument in this connection, we cannot say that the General Assembly would not have enacted this law if it had supposed it applied only to domestic commerce; and if it were in doubt on that point, we should unhesitatingly defer to the opinion of the Court of Appeals, which held that it would give it that construction if the case called for it. In view of the language above quoted it would be unbecoming for us to say that the Court of Appeals would not construe the law as applicable to domestic commerce alone, and if it did, the case would fall directly within the _Mississippi Case_.[43] We, therefore, feel compelled to give it that construction ourselves and so construe it that there can be no doubt as to its constitutionality." Here we have a plain case of the United States Supreme Court declaring an act severable because thereby it could apparently justify as constitutional a measure depriving the Negroes of civil and political rights, whereas in some other cases it has held other acts not severable to reach the same end.

The court continued its reactionary course. In _Chiles_ v. _Chesapeake and Ohio R. R. Company_[44] the court reiterated that "Congressional inaction is equivalent to a declaration that a carrier may, by its regulations, separate white and Negro interstate passengers. In _McCabe_ v. _Atchinson, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Company_,[45] Justice Hughes giving the opinion of the court, followed the _Plessy_ v. _Ferguson_ decision. He did not believe, moreover, "that the contention that an act though fair on its face may be so unequally and oppressively administered by the public authorities as to amount to an unconstitutional discrimination by the State itself, is applicable where it is the administration of the provisions of a separate coach law by carriers, which is claimed to produce the discrimination. The separate coach provisions of Oklahoma[46] apply to transportation wholly intrastate in absence of a different construction by State courts and do not contravene the commerce clause of the Federal court. The court held, however, that so much of the Oklahoma separate coach law as permits carriers to provide sleeping cars, dining cars, and chair cars for white persons, and to provide no similar accommodations for Negroes, denies the latter the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Constitution.

The most recent case, that of the _South Covington and Cincinnati Street Railway, Plaintiff in error_ v. _Commonwealth of Kentucky_ shows another step in the direction of complete surrender to caste. This company was a Kentucky corporation, each of the termini of the railroad of which was in Kentucky. The complainant hoped to prevent the segregation of passengers carried from Ohio into Kentucky. The decision was that a Kentucky street railway may be required by statute of that State to furnish either separate cars or separate compartments in the same car for white and Negro passengers although its principal business is the carriage of passengers in interstate commerce between Cincinnati, Ohio, and Kentucky across the Ohio River. Such a requirement affects interstate commerce only incidentally, and does not subject it to unreasonable demands. In other words, this inconvenience to the carrier is not very much and the humiliation and burden which it entails upon persons of color thus segregated should not concern the court, although they are supposed to be citizens of the United States.

Justice Day dissented and Justices Van DeVanter and Putney concurred on the ground that the attachment of a different car upon the Kentucky side on so short a journey would burden interstate commerce as to cost and in the practical operation of the traffic. The provision for a separate compartment for the use of only interstate Negro passengers would lead to confusion and discrimination. The same interstate transportation would be subject to conflicting regulation in the two States in which it is conducted. They believed that it imposed an unreasonable burden and according to the dissentients was, therefore, void.

JUSTICE IN THE COURTS.

One of the most important constitutional rights denied the Negroes is that of justice in the courts. In as much as their former masters felt enraged against the freedmen because of their sudden release from bondage, they too often perpetrated upon the freedmen crimes for which the Negro had no redress in courts, for white persons constituted the accusers, the prosecutors, the judges, and the juries. Immediately following the Civil War, before the amendments of the Constitution enacted in the special behalf of the race were effected, Negroes were by the Black Codes deprived of all of the rights of citizens and nothing bore more grievously upon them than the deprivation of the right to serve on juries. Some States had special laws carrying out this prohibition. The first case of consequence requiring an interpretation of the State law to this effect was that of _Strauder_ v. _West Virginia_,[47] already mentioned above. In this case the court took high constitutional ground. It was held that "a law of West Virginia limiting to white persons, twenty-one years of age and citizens of the State, the right to sit upon juries, was a discrimination which implied a legal inferiority in civil society, which lessened the security of the right of the colored race, and was a step toward reducing them to a condition of servility." The right of a man of color that, in the selection of jurors to pass upon his life, liberty, and property, there shall be no exclusion of his race and no discrimination against them because of color, was asserted in a number of cases, to wit: _Virginia_ v. _Rives_,[48] _Neal_ v. _Delaware_,[49] _Gibbons_ v. _Kentucky_.[50]

In the case of _Bush_ v. _The Commonwealth of Kentucky_[51] the Negro faced an additional difficulty in that the court held that wherein there was no specific law excluding persons from service upon juries because of their race or color, that the petitioner would have to show evidence to that effect. In the case of _Smith_ v. _The State of Mississippi_[52] it was held that the omission or refusal of officers to include Negro citizens in the list from which jurors might be drawn is not, as to a Negro subsequently brought to trial, a denial of equal protection of laws. In the case of _Murray_ v. _The State of Louisiana_[53] the decision was that the fact that a law confers on the jury commissioners judicial power in the selection of citizens for jury service, does not involve a conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, although in the exercise of such power they might not select Negroes for jury service.

The case of _Williams_ v. _Mississippi_ was more interesting. The law of that State prescribed the qualifications of voters and of grand and petit juries and invested the administrative officers with a large discretion in determining what citizens have the necessary qualifications. As it appeared that in the use of their discretion they would exclude Negroes from such juries it was contended that the act of Mississippi was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. The court held, however, that the Mississippi law could not be held repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment merely on a showing that the law might operate as a discrimination against the Negro race, in absence of proof of an actual discrimination in the case under consideration. This ground has often proved convenient for the Supreme Court of the United States in dodging the question whether or not the Negroes must be protected in the rights guaranteed them by the Constitution.

This case was decided in 1897 and two years later Mr. Justice Gray, giving the opinion of the court in the case of _Carter_ v. _Texas_,[54] said that the exclusion of all persons of African race from a grand jury which finds an indictment against a Negro in a State court, when they are excluded solely because of their race or color denies him the equal protection of the laws in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, whether such exclusion is done through the action of the legislature, through the courts, or through the executive or administrative officers of the State. This was substantially the position taken in the case of _Strauder_ v. _West Virginia_ twenty years earlier.

The Negroes received some encouragement, too, from the decision of _Rogers_ v. _Alabama_.[55] It was held that there had been a denial of the equal protection of the laws by a ruling of a State court upon the motion to quash an indictment on account of the exclusion of Negroes from the grand jury list, which motion, though because of its being in two printed octavos, was struck from the files under the color of local practice for prolixity, contained an allegation that certain provisions of the newly adopted State constitution, claimed to have the effect of disfranchising Negroes because of their race, when such action worked as a consideration in the minds of the jury commissioners in reaching their decision. The court held in _Martin_ v. _The State of Texas_, however,[56] that a discrimination against Negroes because of their race in the selection of grand or petit jurors as forbidden by the Fourteenth Amendment is not shown by written motion to quash, respectively, the indictment of the panel of petit jurors, charging such discrimination where no evidence was introduced to establish the facts stated in the omissions. It is not sufficient merely to prove that no persons of color were on the jury.

As certain States wished to make the government further secure in the elimination of Negroes from juries, after making the qualifications for voters unusually rigid so as to exclude persons of African descent, they easily established the same qualifications for jurors, to relieve persons of color also from that service. In the case of _Franklin_ v. _South Carolina_[57] the court held that there was no discrimination against Negroes because of their race in the selection of the grand jury made by the laws of South Carolina,[58] giving the jury commissioner the right to select electors of good moral character such as they may deem qualified to serve as jurors, being persons of sound mind and free from all legal exceptions. A motion, therefore, to quash an indictment against a Negro for disqualification of the grand jurors who must be electors, because of a change in the State constitution of South Carolina respecting the qualifications of electors, did not violate the Act of Congress, June 25, 1868, and, therefore, did not present to the Supreme Court of the United States a question of a denial of Federal right where there is nothing in the record to show that the grand jury as actually impaneled contained any person who was not qualified as an elector under the earlier State constitution, which was, according to the allegation, so made up as to exclude Negroes on account of their color. The Supreme Court of the United States then took no account of the intent or the spirit of the law maker as this tribunal had been accustomed to do in cases of constitutional import and left upon the Negro the burden of performing the difficult task of showing that he had been discriminated against on account of his color when the discrimination could be easily effected without the possibility of his actually producing any evidence that on the face of itself could convince the court.

SUFFRAGE

As already mentioned above the Negroes during this period were struggling to retain the right of suffrage and, of course, were attacking in the courts those restrictions primarily directed toward the elimination of the Negroes from the electorate. The Supreme Court of the United States generally shrank from these cases by disclaiming jurisdiction. In _Ex Parte Siebold_,[59] _Ex Parte Yarborough_,[60] and _In re Coy_,[61] however, the general jurisdiction of Federal courts over matters involved in the election of national officers was affirmed. The court held that it had jurisdiction in the election case in _Wiley_ v. _Sinkler_,[62] when there was brought an action to recover damages of an election board for wilfully rejecting a citizen's vote for a member of the House of Representatives. In _Swafford_ v. _Templeton_[63] a suit was brought for damages for the alleged wrongful refusal by the defendants at an election of officers to permit the plaintiff to vote at a national election for a member of the House of Representatives. It was held that the court had jurisdiction.

From the Supreme Court of the United States, however, the Negroes received little encouragement, in as much as the right of suffrage, with its requirements of property ownership and the literacy test, could be withheld from the Negro without specifically discriminating against any one on account of race or color. In _Southy_ v. _Virginia_, 181 U. S., Revised Statutes, of the United States, Cont. St. 1901, pages 37-42, providing that every person who prevents, hinders, controls or intimidates another from exercising the right of suffrage, to whom that right is guaranteed by the Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, by means of bribery, etc., shall be punished, was held invalid as it was considered to be beyond the constitutional power of Congress to act in such a case except in that of race discrimination. If the discrimination is in a State or municipal election, however, Congress may intervene, if the discrimination is shown, but not until then.

In the case of _Giles_ v. _Harris_[64] there was brought to the Supreme Court a bill in equity, complaining that Negroes qualified to vote for members of Congress had been refused on account of their color by virtue of the Alabama constitution, whereas white men were registered to vote at such an election. Relief was asked for on the basis of the Revised Statutes, Sec. 1979, praying that the Supreme Court should order that the petitioner be registered and declare null and void the special clause of the Alabama constitution. The court answered this petition with certain observations disclaiming jurisdiction largely for "want of merit in the averments which were made in the complaint as to the violation of Federal rights."

The court held that if the registrars acting at this election in Alabama had no authority under the new constitution, which the petitioner prayed that the court might declare null and void, they could not legally register the plaintiff. If they had authority, they were within their right to use their discretion. If this clause in the constitution should be struck down according to the prayer of the plaintiff, there would be no board to which the mandamus could be issued. The Supreme Court, therefore, held that no damage had been suffered because no refusal to register by a board constituted in defiance of the Federal Constitution could disqualify a legal voter otherwise entitled to exercising the electorate franchise, since this amounts to a decision upon an independent non-Federal ground sufficient to sustain the judgment without reference to the Federal question presented. It observed, moreover, that the bill imported that the great mass of the white population intended to keep the blacks from voting. To meet such an intent something more than ordering the plaintiff named to be inscribed upon the lists of 1902 would be needed.

Giving his dissenting opinion in this case, Justice Brewer showed that "although the statute and these decisions thus expressly limit the range of inquiry to the question of jurisdiction, it was held that there is a constitutional question shown in the pleadings. The certificate, therefore, might be ignored and the entire case presented to the court for consideration.... Hence every case coming up on a certificate of jurisdiction may be held to present a constitutional question and be open for full inquiry in respect to all matters involved." Brewer would not assent to the proposition that the case presented was not a strictly legal one and entitling a party to a judicial hearing and decision. "He is a citizen of Alabama entitled to vote. He wanted to vote at an election for a Representative in Congress. Without registration he could not, and registration was wrongfully denied him. That many others were thus treated does not deprive him of his right or deprive him of relief." Justice Harlan dissented also giving practically the same argument as that of Justice Brewer. He observed: "The court in effect says that although it may know that the record fails to show a case within the original cognizance of the Circuit Court, it may close its eyes to that fact, and review the case on its merit." In view of the adjudged cases, he could not agree that the failure of parties to raise a question of jurisdiction relieved this court of its duty to raise it upon its own motion.

There was thereafter presented a petition for modification of judgment and for a rehearing June 1, 1903. The court ordered the decree of affirmance changed adding these words: "So far as such decree orders that the petition be dismissed, but without prejudice to such further proceedings as the petitioner may be advised to make."

The case of _Giles_ v. _Teasley_[65] was, to some extent, of the same sort. A Negro of Alabama who had previously been a voter and who had complied with the reasonable requirements of the board of registration, was refused the right to vote, for, as he alleged, no reason other than his race and color, the members of the board having been appointed and having acted under the provision of the State constitution of 1901. He sued the members of the board for damages and for such refusal in an action, and applied for a writ of mandamus to compel them to register him, alleging in both proceedings the denial of his rights under the Federal Constitution and that the provisions of the State Constitution were repugnant to the Fifteenth Amendment. The complaint had been dismissed on demurrer and the writ refused, the highest court of the State holding that if the provisions of the constitution were repugnant to the Fifteenth Amendment, they were void and that the board of registers appointed thereunder had no existence and no power to act and would not be liable for a refusal to register him, and could not be compelled by writ of mandamus to do so; that if the provisions were constitutional, the registrars had acted properly thereunder and their action was not reviewable by the courts.

"The right of the Supreme Court to review the decisions of the highest court of a State," said the national tribunal, "is even in cases involving the violations by the provisions of a State constitution of the Fifteenth Amendment, circumscribed by rules established by law, and in every case coming to the court on writ of error or appeal the question of jurisdiction must be answered whether propounded by the counsel or not. Where the State court decided the case for reasons independent of the Federal right claimed its action is not reviewable on writ of error by the United States Supreme Court." It was held that the writs of error to this court should be dismissed, as such decisions do not involve the adjudication against the plaintiff in error of a right claimed under the Federal Constitution but deny the relief demanded on grounds wholly independent thereof." In _Wiley_ v. _Sinkler_, and _Swafford_ v. _Templeton_, the registrars were legally averred to be qualified.[66]

In the Maryland case of _Pope_ v. _Williams_[67] the court further explained its position. While the State cannot restrict suffrage on account of color, the privilege is not given by the Federal Constitution, nor does it spring from citizenship of the United States. While the right to vote for members of Congress is derived exclusively from the law of the State in which they are chosen but has its foundation in the laws and Constitution of the United States, the elector must be one entitled to vote under its statute. A law, therefore, requiring a declaration of intention to become citizens before registering as voters of all persons coming from without Maryland is not a violation of the Constitution.

In the case of _Guinn_ v. _United States_[68] the court held that the literacy test was legal and not subject to revision but in this clause of the constitution that part of a section providing for literacy was closely connected with the so-called grandfather clause that the United States Supreme Court declared both unconstitutional as it did in the case also of _Myers_ v. _Anderson_,[69] coming from Annapolis, Maryland, and in the case of _The United States_ v. _Mosely_, from Oklahoma.[70] The clause referred to follows:

"No person shall be registered as an elector of this State or be
allowed to vote in any election herein, unless he be able to read
and write any section of the Constitution of the State of
Oklahoma; but no person who was on January 1, 1866, or at any
time prior thereto, entitled to vote under any form of
government, or who at that time resided in some foreign nation,
and no lineal descendant of such person, shall be denied the
right to register and vote because of his inability to read and
write sections of such constitution. Precinct election inspectors
having in charge the registration of electors shall enforce the
provisions of this section at the time of registration, provided
registration be required. Should registration be dispensed with,
the provisions of this section shall be enforced by the precinct
officer when electors apply for ballots to vote."

The court held that this was a standard of voting which on its face was in substance but a revitalization of conditions which when they prevailed in the past had been destroyed by the self-operative force of the Thirteenth Amendment.

EDUCATIONAL PRIVILEGES

These suffrage laws left the Negroes in an untoward situation for the reason that there was little hope that, with the educational facilities afforded them, that they would soon be able to meet the same requirement of literacy as that which might not embarrass the whites offering themselves as jurors and electors. The States upheld in their action by the United States Supreme Court, had shifted from their shoulders the burden of the uplift of the Negro by the ingenious doctrine that equal accommodations did not mean identical accommodations and that the spirit and the letter of the law would be complied with by providing separate accommodations for Negroes. In the end, however, separate accommodations turned out to be in some cases no accommodations at all.

This was the situation as it was brought out in the case of _Cumming_ v. _The Board of Education of Richmond County_.[71] It appeared that a tax for schools had been levied in this district. The Negroes objected to paying that portion of the tax which provided for the maintenance of a high school, the benefits of which they were denied, when there was no high school provided for them. The board of education of Richmond County had maintained a high school for Negroes but abolished it. The petitioner prayed, therefore, that an injunction be granted against the collection of such portion of the school tax as was used for the maintenance of said high school. The defendant set up the plea that it had not established a white high school, but had merely appropriated some money to assist a denominational high school for white children, saying "that it had to choose between maintaining the lower schools for a large number of Negroes and providing a high school for about sixty." The board of education, declared, moreover, that the establishment of a Negro high school was merely postponed.

The opinion of the court was that a decision by a State court, denying an injunction against the maintenance by a board of education of a high school for white children, while failing to maintain one for Negro children also, for the reason that the funds were not sufficient to maintain it in addition to needed primary schools for Negro children, does not constitute a denial to persons of color of the equal protection of the law or equal privileges of citizens of the United States. The court held that under the circumstances disclosed it could not say that this action of the State court was, within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, a denial by the State to the plaintiffs and to those associated with them of the equal protection of the laws, or of any privileges belonging to them as citizens of the United States. While the court admitted that the benefits and burdens of public taxation must be shared by citizens without discrimination against any class on account of their race, it held that the education of 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 case of a clear unmistakable disregard of rights secured by the supreme law of the land.

This is downright sophistry. To any sane man it could not but be evident that this was an "unmistakable disregard of rights secured by the Supreme law of the land." The school authorities had separated white and Negro children for purposes of education on account of race and had, moreover, refused to grant the Negro children the facilities equal to those of the white. The State, in the first place, in establishing separate schools on the basis of race, violated a right guaranteed the Negro race by the Constitution of the United States, and the board of education of Richmond County violated still another in failing to provide for the Negroes the same facilities for high school education as those furnished the whites while taxing all citizens without regard to race. It is true that the Federal Government cannot generally interfere in matters of police regulation of persons and property in the States but when the matter of race is introduced the national authority is thoroughly competent within the Constitution to restrain such local government or any group of persons so authorized by such government. It would have been unwise for the court to enjoin the collection of such a tax but it could have on the constitutional points raised in this case declared invalid laws separating the races for purposes of education.

The sophistry of the Supreme Court in seeking to justify its refusal to maintain the rights of the Negro to education is still more evident from its opinion in the case of _Berea College_ v. _The Commonwealth of Kentucky_, decided in 1908. Berea College was established in 1856 by a group of antislavery Kentucky mountaineers, led by John G. Fee, desiring to bring up their children in the love of free institutions. There were no Negro students prior to the Civil War but a few Negro soldiers were admitted on returning home from the front in their uniforms and members of the race were thereafter welcomed at Berea. In the course of time, however, this coeducation of the races became very distasteful to the State of Kentucky with its decided increase in race prejudice necessitating in their economy a thorough proscription of the Negro race. In 1904, therefore, the State of Kentucky enacted a law against persons and corporations maintaining schools for both white persons and Negroes.

Feeling that its charter was violated by this law and also that it infringed upon the rights guaranteed the Negro in the Constitution of the United States, Berea College attacked the validity of this measure in the inferior courts and finally in the Supreme Court of the United States. The plaintiff unanswerably contended that this Kentucky law abridged one's privileges and immunities, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, which was a limitation on the police power of the State when it brings in the matter of race. It further contended that the Constitution makes no distinction between races and that the Fourteenth Amendment is not only to protect Negroes but to protect white persons in the enjoyment of their rights. The plaintiff admitted that social equality could not be enforced by legislation but contended that voluntary social equality of persons cannot be constitutionally prohibited, unless it is shown that such is immoral, disorderly, or for some other reason so palpably injurious to the public welfare as to justify direct interference with the personal liberty of the citizens.

Evidently wishing to find some ground upon which it could base its opinion upholding the Supreme Court of Kentucky which had sustained this statute, the Supreme Court of the United States fell back upon various principles of interpretation. The court said it would not disturb the judgment of the State court resting on Federal or non-Federal grounds, if the latter was sufficient to sustain the decision in as much as the State court determines the extent of the limitations of powers conferred by the State on its corporations. It directed attention to the fact that a corporation is not entitled to all the immunities to which individuals are entitled and a State may withhold from its corporations privileges and powers of which it cannot constitutionally deprive individuals. A State statute limiting the powers of corporations and individuals may be constitutional as to the former, although unconstitutional as to the latter; and if separable it will not be held unconstitutional in the instance of a corporation unless it clearly appears that the legislature would not have enacted it as to corporations separately. "The same rule," continues the court, "which permits separable sections of a statute to be declared unconstitutional without rendering the entire statute void applies to separable provisions of a section of a statute. In coming to the assistance of the Supreme Court of Kentucky the national tribunal said the prohibition of Kentucky against persons and corporations maintaining schools for both white persons and Negroes is separable and, even if an unconstitutional restraint as to individuals, is not unconstitutional as to corporations, it being within the power of the State to determine the powers conferred upon its corporations.

The court conceded that the reserve power to alter, or amend charters is subject to reasonable limitations but insisted that the Kentucky law includes no alteration or amendment which defeats or substantially impairs the object of the grant of vested rights. The court then went almost out of its way to say that "a general statute which in effect alters or amends a charter is to be construed as an amendment for all even if not in terms so designated. The court conceded that a statute which permits the education of both whites and Negroes at the same time in different localities, although prohibiting their attendance in the same place, does not defeat the object of a grant to maintain the college for all persons and is not violative of the contract clause of the Federal Constitution, the State law having reserved the right to repeal, alter and amend charters.

Justice Harlan dissented. He referred to the fact that the court held also, in _Huntington_ v. _Werthen_,[72] that if one provision of a statute be invalid the whole act will fall, where "it is evident the legislature would not have enacted one of them without the other." Harlan meant to say here that to construe this law as applying only to corporations and not to individuals would give it an interpretation that the legislature never had in mind. The intention of the State legislature was to prevent all coeducation of Negroes and whites whether it should be done by persons or corporations. The whole law, therefore, should fall. Justice Harlan conceded that a State reserved the right to repeal the charter but it was not repealed by this act. The statute did not purport even to amend the charter of any particular corporation but assumed to establish a certain rule applicable alike to all individuals, associations, or corporations that teach the white and black races together in the same institution. This decision of the United States Supreme Court was then nothing more than "fine sophistry" to sanction an arbitrary invasion of the rights of liberty and property guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Justice Harlan contended that if the giving of instruction is not a property right, it is one's liberty. Exposing the sophistry of the court he remarked that if the schools must be subjected to such segregation, why not also the Sabbath Schools and Churches? "If States can prohibit the coeducation of the whites and blacks it may prohibit the association of the Anglo-Saxons and Latins; of the Christians and the Jews. Have we become so inoculated with prejudice of race," continued Justice Harlan, "that an American government, professedly based on the principles of freedom, and charged with the protection of all citizens alike, can make distinctions between such citizens in the matter of their voluntary meeting for innocent purposes simply because of their respective races? Further if the lower court be right, then a State may make it a crime for white and colored persons to frequent the same market places, at the same time, or appear in an assembly of citizens convened to consider questions of a public or political nature in which all citizens without regard to race, are equally interested."

THE RIGHT TO LABOR

Although the Negro by these various decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States had been deprived of rights essential to freedom and citizenship in matters of voting, service upon juries, education, and the use of common carriers, there remained even another right which was to be infringed upon without the hope of any redress from the United States Supreme Court. This was the right to contract, to labor. Every honest man should live by his own labor and it is a well established principle of democratic government, that in the exercise of this right the individual should be free not only from interference on the part of the government but should enjoy protection from individuals subject to the government. Because of the development of race prejudice into a flame of bitter antagonism among the laboring men during the period of commercial expansion in the United States since the Reconstruction period, the country has been all but thoroughly organized through trades unions, so as to restrict the Negro to menial service by written constitutions in keeping with the caste which has so long figured conspicuously in American institutions.

Negroes sought redress in the courts and finally in the United States Supreme Court, the best case in evidence being that of _Hodges_ v. _United States_.[73] In this case came a complaint from certain Negroes in Arkansas laboring in the service of an employer according to a contract. Because of their color certain criminals in that community conspired to injure, oppress, threaten and intimidate them, resulting in the severance of their connection with this employer and the consequent economic loss resulting therefrom. The Negroes thus complaining brought this case to the United States Supreme Court contending that a remedy for this evil was to be found in the revised statutes of the United States Senate, Sections 1977, 1979, 5508, and 5510. These sections follow in the order of their importance:

_Section 5508._ If two or more persons conspire to injure,
oppress, threaten or intimidate any citizen in the free exercise
or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the
Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his
having so exercised the same; or if two or more persons go in
disguise on the highway, or on the premises of another, with
intent to hinder his free exercise or enjoyment of any right or
privilege so secured, they shall be fined not more than five
thousand dollars and imprisoned not more than ten years, and
shall, moreover, be thereafter ineligible to any office, or place
of honor, profit or trust created by the Constitution or laws of
the United States.

Other statutes referred to but not so vital were:

_Section 1977._ All persons within the jurisdiction of the United
States shall have the same right in every State and Territory to
make and enforce contracts, to sue the parties, give evidence,
and to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for
the security of persons and property as is enjoyed by white
citizens, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains,
penalties, taxes, licenses, and exactions of every kind, and to
no other.

_Section 1978._ All citizens of the United States shall have the
same right in every State and territory, as is enjoyed by white
citizens thereof to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and
convey real and personal property.

_Section 1979._ Every person who, under color of any statute,
ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or
Territory, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of
the United States or other persons within the jurisdiction
thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or
immunities, secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable
to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or
other proper proceeding for redress.

_Section 5510._ Every person who, under color of any law,
statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, subjects or causes to
be subjected, any inhabitant of any State or Territory to the
deprivation of any right, privilege, or immunities, secured or
protected by the Constitution and laws of the United States or to
different punishments, pains or penalties, on account of such
inhabitants being an alien, or by reason of his color, or race,
than are prescribed for the punishment of citizens, shall be
punished by a fine of not more than one thousand dollars or by
imprisonment not more than one year, or by both.

The decision in this case was in substance that Congress cannot make it an offense against the United States for individuals to combine or conspire to prevent even by force, citizens of African descent, solely because of their race, from earning a living, although the right to earn one's living in all legal ways and to make lawful contracts in reference thereto is a vital point of freedom established by the Constitution. Section 5508 had been upheld in _Ex Parte Yarborough_,[74] and in the case of _Logan_ v. the _United States_[75] the court referred to this section as having been upheld in _Ex Parte Yarborough_. In _United States_ v. _Reese_, moreover,[76] Justice Waite said in 1875, speaking for the court, "The rights and immunities created by or dependent upon the Constitution of the United States can be protected by Congress. The form and the manner of the protection may be such as Congress in the legitimate exercise of its legislative discretion shall provide. This may be varied to meet the necessities of the particular right to be protected."

"The whole scope and effect of this series of decisions," continued the court, "was that, while certain fundamental rights recognized and declared but not granted or created, in some of the amendments to the Constitution are thereby guaranteed only against violation or abridgement by the United States, or by the States, as the case may be, and cannot, therefore, be affirmatively enforced by Congress against unlawful causes of individuals; yet that every right created by, arising under, or dependent upon the Constitution of the United States may be protected and enforced by Congress by such means and in such manner as Congress in the exercise of the correlative duty of protection, or of the legislative powers conferred upon it by the Constitution, may in its discretion deem most eligible and best adopted to attain the object." This doctrine was sustained also by the decision in the case of _United States_ v. _Waddell_,[77] and _Motes_ v. _United States_.[78] Here it was emphatically stated that Congress might pass any law necessary or proper for carrying out any power conferred upon it by the Constitution.

The court here, however, evaded the real question as before, dodging behind the doctrine that while a State or the United States could not abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens, individuals or groups of individuals may do so and Congress has no power to interfere in such matters since these come within the police power of the State. In other words, the government cannot discriminate against the Negro itself, but it can establish agencies with power to do it. It is not surprising that Justice Harlan dissented, feeling as he had on former occasions that this decision permitted the States and groups of individuals supposedly subject to the government of those States to fasten upon the Negro badges or incidents of slavery in violation of the civil rights guaranteed him by the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. He believed that Congress had the right to pass any law to protect citizens in the enjoyment of any right granted him by Congress. The duty of the Federal government as Justice Harlan saw it was very clear in that the State had caused the race question to be injected therein and in such a case Congress always has power to act.

On the whole, however, the United States Supreme Court has not yet had the moral courage to face the issue in cases involving the constitutional rights of the Negro. Not a decision of that tribunal has yet set forth a straightforward opinion as to whether the States can enact one code of laws for the Negroes and another for the other elements of our population in spite of the fact that the Constitution of the United States prohibits such iniquitous legislation. In cases in which this question has been frankly put the court has wiggled out of it by some such declaration as that the case was improperly brought, that there were defects in the averments, or that the court lacked jurisdiction.

In the matter of jurisdiction the United States Supreme Court has been decidedly inconsistent. This tribunal at first followed the opinion of Chief Justice John Marshall in the case of _Osborn_ v. _United States Bank_,[79] that "when a question to which the judicial power of the United States is extended by the Constitution forms an ingredient of the original cause it is in the power of Congress to give the Circuit Courts the jurisdiction of that cause, although other questions of fact or of law may be involved." Prior to the rise of the Negro to the status of so-called citizenship the court built upon this decision the prerogative of examining all judicial matters pertaining to the Federal Government until it made itself the sole arbiter in all important constitutional questions and became the bulwark of nationalism. After some reaction the court resumed that position in all of its decisions except those pertaining to the Negro; for in the recent commercial expansion of the country involving the litigation of unusually large property values, the United States Supreme Court has easily found grounds for jurisdiction where economic rights are concerned; but just as easily disclaims jurisdiction where human rights are involved in cases in which Negroes happen to be the complainants.

The fairminded man, the patriot of foresight, observes, therefore, with a feeling of disappointment this prostitution of an important department of the Federal Government to the use of the reactionary forces in the United States endeavoring to whittle away the essentials of the Constitution which guarantees to all persons in this country all the rights enjoyed under the most progressive democracy on earth. Since the Civil War the United States Supreme Court instead of performing the intended function of preserving the Constitution by democratic interpretation, has by its legislative decisions practically stricken therefrom so many of its liberal provisions and read into the Constitution so much caste and autocracy that discontent and radicalism have developed almost to the point of eruption.

C. G. WOODSON

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _McCulloch_ v. _Maryland_, 4 Wheaton, 416.

[2] _Ibid._, 416.

[3] _Ibid._, 416.

[4] _Dred Scott_ v. _Sanford_, 19 Howard, 399.

[5] 16 Peters, 539, 612.

[6] _Dred Scott_ v. _Sanford_, 19 Howard, 399.

[6a] 21 Howard, 506.

[7] 6 Howard, 344.

[8] 94 U.S., 113.

[9] 16 Wall., 678.

[10] This was held in _Township of Queensburg_ v. _Culver_ (19 Wall., 83), in _Township of Pine Grove_ v. _Talcott_ (19 Wall., 666), and in Massachusetts in _Worcester_ v. _Western R. R. Corporation_ (4 Met., 564).

[11] _Storey on Bailments_, Sec. 475-6, and _Rex_ v. _Ivens_, 7 Carrington & Payne, 213; 32, E. C. L., 495.

[12] 16 Wall., 36.

[13] 100 U. S., 303.

[14] 100 U. S., 306.

[15] 103 U. S., 386.

[16] _Ex Parte Virginia_, 100 U. S., 346-7.

[17] 14 statutes, 27, Chapter 31.

[18] 16 statutes, 140, Chapter 114.

[19] 109 U. S., 1.

[20] _United States_ v. _Cruikshank_, 92 U. S., 542; _Virginia_ v. _Rives_, 100 U. S., 318; _Ex Parte Virginia_, 100 U. S., 339.

[21] 6 Cranch, 128.

[22] 99 U. S., 418.

[23] _United States_ v. _Reese_, 92 U. S., 214; _Strauder_ v. _West Virginia_, 100 U. S., 303.

[24] _Ward_ v. _Maryland_, 12 Wall., 418; _Corfield_ v. _Coryell_, 4 Washington, D. C., 371; _Paul_ v. _Virginia_, 8 Wall., 168; _Slaughter-house cases_, _Ibid._, 36.

[25] 92 U. S., 542.

[26] 95 U. S., 487.

[27] The Louisiana Act was:

_Section--._ All persons engaged within this State in the
business of common carriers of passengers, shall have the right
to refuse to admit any person to their railroad cars, street
cars, steamboats or other water-crafts, stage coaches,
omnibusses, or other vehicles, or to expel any person therefrom
after admission, when such persons shall, on demand, refuse or
neglect to pay the customary fare, or when such person shall be
of infamous character or shall be guilty, after admission to the
conveyance of the carrier, of gross, vulgar, or disorderly
conduct, or who shall commit any act tending to injure the
business of the carrier, prescribed for the management of his
business, after such rules and regulations shall have been made
known: _Provided_, said rules and regulations make no
discrimination on account of race or color, and shall have the
right to refuse any person admission to such conveyance where
there is not room or suitable accommodation; and, except in cases
above enumerated, all persons engaged in the business of common
carriers of passengers are forbidden to refuse admission to their
conveyance, or to expel therefrom any person whomsoever.

_Section 4._ For a violation of any provision of the first and
second sections of this act, the party injured shall have right
of action to recover any damage, exemplary as well as actual,
which he may sustain, before any court of competent jurisdiction.
Acts of 1869, page 77; Rev. Stat. 1870, page 93.

[28] Mr. Justice Clifford concurred in the judgment but went into details to justify the segregation whereas the opinion of the court merely tried to see whether the details conflicted with the power of Congress to regulate commerce.

[29] 118 W. S., 557.

[30] All of these are in 94 U. S.

[31] 133 U. S., 587.

[32] This was the law of Mississippi: