Page:Race distinctions in American Law (IA racedistinctions00stepiala).pdf/175

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of operating and maintaining same and fined as provided in the first section hereof.

"Sec. 3. It shall be unlawful for any white person to attend any school or institution where Negroes are received as pupils or receive instruction, and it shall be unlawful for any Negro or colored person to attend any school or institution where white persons are received as pupils, or receive instruction. Any persons so offending shall be fined fifty dollars for each day he attends such institution or school: Provided, That the provisions of this law shall not apply to any penal institution or house of reform.

"Sec. 4. Nothing in this act shall be construed to prevent any private school, college or institution of learning from maintaining a separate and distinct branch thereof, in a different locality, not less than twenty-five miles distant, for the education exclusively of one race or color.

"Sec. 5. This act shall not take effect, or be in operation before the fifteenth day of July, Nineteen Hundred and Four."

This law was general in its terms, requiring, under heavy penalty, the separation of the white and colored races in all schools of the State, private as well as public. But at the time of the consideration of the bill, the legislators probably knew that there was only one school in the State which admitted both white and colored students. That was Berea College, which had been established about fifty years before for the purpose of "promoting the cause of Christ" and of giving general and nonsectarian instruction to "all youth of good moral character." It was primarily for the benefit of the mountain whites of Kentucky,