Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 21.pdf/44

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Notes of Cases consisted of the receipt of the concession and constituted a single transaction. It was apparent that the holding company was the real quarry, the plan being to encompass the punishment of the octopus through the finan cial correction of the tenacle. Although the fine was only one-third the net revenue of the holding company, it was excessive when assessed against the Indiana corporation, and would bankrupt it. The court having no jurisdiction of the New Jersey corporation, which had not even been indicated, it was fine-proof. COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES. (Co education of races.) IT. S. Sup. Ct.—The Supreme Court of the United States has just affirmed a conviction of Berea College in Berea College v. Commonwealth of Kentucky, 29 Sup. Ct. Rep. 33, of the offense of teaching white and negro pupils in the same institu tion. The corporation was sentenced to a $1,000 fine under Ky. Acts 1904, c. 85, p. 181, making it unlawful for any person, corpora tion or association of persons to maintain or operate any college or institution where per sons of the white and negro races are both received as pupils for instruction. Berea Col lege was organized under Act March 9, 1854, authorizing the incorporation of voluntary associations, which was amended in 1856 by reserving to the general assembly the right to alter or repeal the charter of any asso ciation formed thereunder. The principal discussion in the case is based on the question whether the statute was a valid amendment of the charter of the institution. In construing the statute, the Kentucky Court of Appeals held that if the same school taught the different races at different times, though at the same place, it would not be unlawful. The Supreme Court in disposing of the question as to the amendment says that an amendment to the original charter which does not destroy the power of the college to furnish education to all persons, but which simply separates them by time or place of instruction, cannot be said to "defeat or substantially impair the object of the grant." The language of the statute is not in terms an amendment, yet its effect is an amendment, and it would be resting too much on mere form to hold that a statute which in effect works a change in the terms of the charter is not to be considered as an amendment, because not so designated. The act itself, being separable, is to be read as

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though it, in one section, prohibited any per son, in another section any corporation, and, in a third, any association of persons from doing the acts named. Reading the statute as con taining a separate prohibition on all corpora tions, it substantially declares that any authority given by previous charters to in struct the two races at the same time and in the same place is forbidden, and that prohi bition, being a departure from the terms of the original charter in this case, may properly be adjudged an amendment. NOTE This case has been greatly misinterpreted and misrepresented by the daily press. "Who would have dreamed forty years ago, that the Supreme Court of the United States would make it illegal to teach colored children and white children under the same roof?" asks one Northern paper, and similar ques tions have been found everywhere in the editorial comment. The real fact is, that the Supreme Court of the Nation has not made anything legal or illegal. It has merely fol lowed its usual custom and refused to inter fere with a state police regulation which has met with the approval of the state courts and of the state legislature. The segregation of the white and colored races has been every where judicially defended and sustained as a proper police policy directed toward the end, not merely of preventing race conflict, but (to use the language of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, in the case of West chester R. R. Co. v. Miles, 55 Pa. State 209) to prevent the social amalgamation from which "it is but a step to illicit intercourse and but another to intermarriage," and which "cannot but prove detrimental to both races." The policy of segregation is, in fact, of Northern and not of Southern origin. It certainly prevailed in Boston at the beginning of the last century. It was sustained by the Supreme Court of Massa chusetts in 1849, in the case of Roberts v. The City of Boston, 5 Cush. 198, and by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in 1857, in the case of Westchester R. R. Co. v. Lyons, supra. Every subsequent case has merely followed the reasoning of these decisions. Nor can the fact that Berea College is a private institution throw this particular case outside of the line of authority. If the public policy of the state is against the inter marriage of the races and is afraid that intimacy wilMead not only to this, but to