Page:Race distinctions in American Law (IA racedistinctions00stepiala).pdf/193

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They are subject to the same laws and must furnish instruction in the same branches as the white schools. The taxes paid for school purposes by colored persons must be devoted to the maintenance of colored schools. This is the Maryland law,[52] in substance, as it exists at present, except that a separate school does not have to be provided in each election district unless the colored population in that district warrants the board in establishing a colored school. Where there are not enough Negroes in a district to have a school of their own, presumably, they go to the colored schools in neighboring districts.

As early as 1878 a statute of Mississippi[53] provided that schools should be arranged in each county so as to afford ample free school facilities for all educable youths in the county, prohibiting the teaching of white and colored pupils in the same school-house, and the Constitution[54] of 1890 reiterated this requirement of separation. The county school boards are given power to locate one or more schools for Indians in counties where there are enough Indians to form a school.[55]

Missouri seems not to have lost an opportunity to express its belief in separate schools for the races. The Constitution[56] of 1865 made that requirement, adding that the school fund must be appropriated in proportion to the number of children without regard to color. Such separation is required by the laws of 1865,[57] of 1868,[58] of 1869,[59] by the Constitution of 1875,[60] and by a law of 1889,[61] which last made it unlawful for colored children to attend a white school, or white children, a colored school.

The Constitution of North Carolina[62] of 1875 declares that "the children of the white and the children of the