are actual discriminations against one or the other race in those schools which claim to make no distinction on account of race or color. But many such matters as these have not come under the eye of the law, and so have no place here.
SEPARATION BEFORE 1865
Although one need not consider in detail the laws separating the races in schools before the Civil War, because the public school system then was poorly developed, as a rule, and the Negro had not attained the rights of a citizen in many States, still it is well to look into some of the antebellum statutes and decisions to find precedents for later statutes and rulings of the courts upon this subject.
In Ohio, prior to 1848, no provision was made for the public education of colored children, and the property of colored persons was not taxed for school purposes. In fact, a law[15] of February 10, 1829, expressly excluded black and mulattoes from the public schools. In 1834, the child of a man three-quarters white and of a white woman was denied admission to a public school. In a case[16] arising out of it, the court held that a child with more than one-half white blood is entitled to the privilege of the whites, saying: "We think the term white as used in the law describes blood and not complexion. . . . The plaintiff's children, therefore, are white within the meaning of the law, though the defendants have had the shabby meanness to ask from him his contribution of tax, and exclude his children from the benefit of the school he helped to support."
In 1848, a law[17] of the same State provided for the
