Separate but not Equal: The Supreme Court's First Decision on Racial Discrimination in Schools

In 1899, three years after the “separate but equal” decision of Plessy v. Ferguson, the U. S. Supreme Court for the first confronted the problem of racial discrimination in education. for a unanimous court, Justice John Marshall Harlan, recently refurbished reputation rests chiefly on his liberal in Negro rights cases, decided in effect that the judiciary do no more to guarantee equality in public services than it to stop legalized segregation. " ... the education of the people schools maintained by state taxation is a matter belonging to the States," the justice, who was rarely a protector of states' , concluded, "and any interference on the part of Federal with the management of such schools cannot be justified in the case of a clear and unmistakable disregard of rights by the supreme law of the land. We have here no such case be determined …. " Attracting even less attention at the time Plessy did, the case of Joseph W. Cumming, James S. Harper, John C. Ladeveze v. School Board of Richmond County, Ga. never received the attention Plessy gained in the wake of the of segregation in the 1954 Brown decision.