''Berea College v. Kentucky'', 211 U.S. 45 (1908), was a significant case argued before the

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

that upheld the rights of states to prohibit private educational institutions chartered as corporations from admitting both

black Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white ...

and

white White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. White o ...

students.. Like the related ''

Plessy v. Ferguson ''Plessy v. Ferguson'', 163 U.S. 537 (1896), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in qualit ...

'' case, it was also marked by a strongly worded dissent by

John Marshall Harlan John Marshall Harlan (June 1, 1833 – October 14, 1911) was an American lawyer and politician who served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1877 until his death in 1911. He is often called "The Great Dissenter" due to his ...

. The ruling also is a minor landmark on the nature of

corporate personhood Corporate personhood or juridical personality is the legal notion that a juridical person such as a corporation, separately from its associated human beings (like owners, managers, or employees), has at least some of the legal rights and respons ...

Background

Berea College Berea College is a private liberal arts work college in Berea, Kentucky. Founded in 1855, Berea College was the first college in the Southern United States to be coeducational and racially integrated. Berea College charges no tuition; every a ...

is a private liberal arts work college in Berea, Kentucky. It was founded in 1855 as a coeducational and desegregated school, admitting both black and white students and treating them without discrimination. In 1904, the "

Day Law The Day Law mandated racial segregation in educational institutions in Kentucky. Formally designated "An Act to Prohibit White and Colored Persons from Attending the Same School," the bill was introduced in the Kentucky House of Representatives by ...

" (named for Carl Day, a Democrat from

Breathitt County, Kentucky Breathitt County ( ) is a county in the eastern Appalachian portion of the U.S. state of Kentucky. As of the 2020 United States Census, the population was 13,718. Its county seat is Jackson. The county was formed in 1839 and was named for John ...

who had introduced the bill in the Kentucky House of Representatives) was passed by the

Kentucky Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia ...

legislature A legislature is an assembly with the authority to make law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its p ...

, prohibiting any person, group of people, or corporation from the teaching of black and white students in the same school, or from running separate branches of a school for the teaching of black and white students within twenty-five miles of each other. Since at the time Berea was the only such integrated school in Kentucky (and the only such college in the South), it was clearly the target of this law. After Berea College's challenge to the law failed before the

Kentucky Court of Appeals The Kentucky Court of Appeals is the lower of Kentucky's two appellate courts, under the Kentucky Supreme Court. Prior to a 1975 amendment to the Kentucky Constitution the Kentucky Court of Appeals was the only appellate court in Kentucky. Th ...

(although the distance provision was struck down), the case was appealed to the

U.S. Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

Opinion of the Court

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the state. Justice Brewer delivered the main opinion that as the

corporation A corporation is an organization—usually a group of people or a company—authorized by the state to act as a single entity (a legal entity recognized by private and public law "born out of statute"; a legal person in legal context) and ...

in question was chartered under the laws of the state of Kentucky, it was within the rights of the state to make such prohibition to the college. While the state might not have the right to thus restrict the actions of private individuals, that portion of the law was a separate issue, and not under direct consideration; and that the rights and restrictions on individuals were not necessarily the same as for corporations. Justice Harlan vigorously dissented, arguing that the formal title of the law, "An Act to Prohibit White and Colored Persons from Attending the Same School," and the nature of its provisions made clear that no such distinction between individual and corporate restriction existed in the intentions of the legislators, and that the separate consideration of those aspects of the law was not appropriate. Harlan furthermore declared, "The capacity to impart instruction to others is given by the Almighty for beneficent purposes and its use may not be forbidden or interfered with by Government—certainly not, unless such instruction is, in its nature, harmful to the public morals or imperils the public safety. The right to impart instruction, harmless in itself or beneficial to those who receive it, is a substantial right of property—especially, where the services are rendered for compensation. But even if such right be not strictly a property right, it is, beyond question, part of one's liberty as guaranteed against hostile state action by the Constitution of the United States."''Berea College'', 211 U.S. at 67 (Harlan, J., dissenting). Justice Day also dissented, separately from Harlan, but didn't write a dissenting opinion.

Subsequent developments

The result of the ruling was to allow states to prohibit integrated schooling in private institutions, as well as in public schools. Kentucky eventually amended the

in 1950 to allow voluntary integration, shortly prior to the ''

Brown v. Board of Education ''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka'', 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segrega ...

'' case which struck down

racial segregation Racial segregation is the systematic separation of people into race (human classification), racial or other Ethnicity, ethnic groups in daily life. Racial segregation can amount to the international crime of apartheid and a crimes against hum ...

Notes

External links

* *
Bernstein, David E. Lochner vs. Plessy: The Berea College Case
25 J. Sup. Ct. Hist. 93 (2000)

- info *{{cite web, last=Burnside , first=Jacqueline , title="Day Law," Early History of Black Berea , publisher=Berea College , place=Berea, KY , url=http://community.berea.edu/EarlyBlackBerea/daylaw.html , url-status=dead , archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110811060707/http://community.berea.edu/EarlyBlackBerea/daylaw.html , archivedate=2011-08-11 1908 in United States case law United States Supreme Court cases Legal history of Kentucky Berea College 1908 in Kentucky Education in Kentucky United States Supreme Court cases of the Fuller Court United States education case law School segregation in the United States African-American history of Kentucky Higher education case law

Background

Opinion of the Court

Subsequent developments

See also

Notes

External links