The "Separate but Equal" Doctrine took its rise in Chief Justice Shaw's opinion in Roberts v. City of Boston, 59 Mass. 198, 200 (1849), for an excellent account of which see the article by Leonard W. Levy and Harlan B. Phillips in 56 American Historical Review, 510-518 (April, 1951). See also Judge Danforth's opinion in Gallagher v. King, 93 N.Y. 438 (1883).
In a case in which Negro children brought a suit in the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of South Carolina, to enjoin certain school officials from making any distinctions based upon race or color in providing educational facilities, the court found that statutes of South Carolina which required separate schools for the two races did not of themselves violate the Fourteenth Amendment, but ordered the school officials to proceed at once to furnish equal educational facilities and to report to the court within six months as to the action taken. On appeal to the Supreme Court the case was remanded for further proceedings in order that the Supreme Court may "have the benefit of the views of the District Court upon the additional facts brought to the attention of that court in the report which it ordered." Briggs v. Elliott, 342 U.S. 350, 351 (1952).
Recently, the Fourth United States Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting at Richmond, ruled that Negroes must be admitted to the white University of North Carolina Law School in terms which flatly rejected the thesis of separate but equal facilities. "It is a definite handicap to the colored student to confine his association in the Law School with people of his own class," said the opinion of Judge Morris A. Soper.—McKissick v. Carmichael, 187 F. 2d 949, 952 (1951).
[1171] Guinn v. United States, 238 U.S. 347 (1915).
[1172] Williams v. Mississippi, 170 U.S. 213 (1898).
[1173] Giles v. Harris, 189 U.S. 475, 486 (1903).
[1174] Lane v. Wilson, 307 U.S. 268, 275 (1939).
[1176] Nixon v. Herndon, 273 U.S. 536 (1927).
[1177] Nixon v. Condon, 286 U.S. 73, 89 (1932).