Cumming+v.+Board+of+Education

=Cumming v. Board of Education of Richmond County= 175 U.S. 528 (1899)

Plaintiffs were African Americans with high school-aged children. Richmond County, Georgia had previously accommodated black high school students, but a new resolution went into effect that eliminated any opportunity for black children of high school age to attend any school in the county.

Plaintiffs refused to pay the county tax assessed against them for purposes of education, complaining that the tax was illegal and void because it was for the benefit of white persons only. They sued to enjoin the county from collecting the tax.

Segregation was expressly not at issue in this case; the question was only whether the county may maintain a high school for white students while making no corresponding provision for African American students.

The Court framed the issue in these terms: when, for economic purposes, a county finds that it must temporarily suspend its high school for blacks, must it also suspend its high school for whites? Absent bad faith or "hostility to the colored race," the Court found that the board's decision was not an equal protection violation or a deprivation of the privileges of citizenship.

"[W]hile all admit that the benefits and burdens of public taxation must be shared by all citizens without discrimination against any class on account of their race, the education of the people in schools maintained by state taxation is a matter belonging to the respective states, and any interference on the part of Federal authority with the management of such schools cannot be justified except in the case of a clear and unmistakable disregard of rights secured by the supreme law of the land."

The Court's holding apparently means that the denial of schooling only to black students, solely on account of their race, is not a "clear and unmistakable disregard of rights."