And if one seeks in the judicial pronouncements of the day for independent evidence of what the Congress and the States understood and contemplated the amendment to mean the evidence is overwhelming: The power of the States to maintain separate schools was “generally, if not universally” held to be completely in accord with the Fourteenth Amendment. The seven justices who united in Plessy were all mature men at the time the amendment became effective in 1868. Edward D. White of Louisiana, the youngest, was then twenty-three, Brown of Michigan was thirty-two, Fuller of Illinois thirty-five, Field of California fifty-two, Gray of Massachusetts forty, Shiras of Pennsylvania, thirty-six, and Peckham of New York thirty. From a standpoint of constitutional law, who could have known the understanding and contemplation of the amendment better than they? They grew up with it. And in 1896, when they handed down the Plessy opinion, they were men of fifty-one to eighty, in a position to look back maturely upon twenty-eight years of political life under the Fourteenth Amendment.
The other two questions of a general nature posed by the Supreme Court in June 1953 may be dealt with more briefly. Much of the ground has been covered already. These were:
Question 2: If neither the Congress in submitting nor the States in ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment understood that compliance with it would require the immediate abolition of segregation in public schools, was it nevertheless the understanding of the framers of the amendment
(a) that future Congresses might, in the exercise of their power under Section 5 of the amendment, abolish such segregation, or
(b) that it would be within the judicial power, in the light of future conditions, to construe the amendment as abolishing such segregation of its own force?
Question 3: On the assumption that the answers to Questions 2 (a) and (b) do not dispose of the issue, is it within the judicial power, in construing the amendment, to abolish segregation in public schools?
Question 2 (a) may best be answered by studying the Fourteenth Amendment in terms of political power. What is the Fourteenth? Obviously, it is first of all a prohibition upon the States. It is not primarily a grant of power to the Congress. Its thrust is negative: The States shall not make; the States shall not enforce; the States shall not abridge; the States shall not deprive; the States shall not deny. Section 3 carries an incidental delegation of power to the Congress, authorizing the removal of political disabilities imposed upon Confederate soldiers, and Section 5 vests in the Congress a power “to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”
Would an act of Congress prohibiting the States from maintaining racially separate schools be “appropriate legislation, enforcing the provisions of this article”? The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment did not think so. They did not regard the right to attend a particular school as a “civil right.” Well after the amendment became operative, Sumner and other abolitionist leaders in the Congress several times introduced legislation having this end; twice they got such a bill through the Senate (1872 and 1874), on tie votes broken by the Vice-President, but they were never able to get a bill through the House. And in the Civil Rights Act of 1875, an effort to prohibit racially separate schools was defeated decisively.
The power vested in Congress in the fifth section is no general grant of power. It is limited to legislation appropriate to enforcing the provisions “of this article.” And until it can be shown that one of the provisions “of this article” was intended to prohibit to the States the power to maintain racially separate schools, it cannot be shown that Congress appropriately could enact legislation having that end.
No provision of the Fourteenth Amendment imposes such a prohibition on the States. Therefore, no act of the Congress validly could seek to enforce such a prohibition.