Page:Race distinctions in American Law (IA racedistinctions00stepiala).pdf/372

 being followed by most of the Southern States within the last seven years.

A similar tendency toward crystallization of race distinctions into law is found in schools. Though Massachusetts permitted separate schools as early as 1800, and though the Southern States required them from the beginning of their public school system, it is only recently that any States have seen fit to create distinctions in private schools by legislation. At present, Florida, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Tennessee prohibit the teaching of white and Negro students in the same private schools, and their action in so doing the Supreme Court of the United States in the Berea College case has decided to be constitutional. Moreover, the Japanese school question of the West has become of national concern only within the last two years.

In the matter of suffrage also one observes the same general trend of practices slowly passing into statutes. Between 1877 and 1890 Negroes in the South were disfranchised to a great extent in defiance of law. Beginning with Mississippi in 1890 and ending with Georgia in 1908, seven Southern States have made constitutional provisions which, though not in letter creating race distinctions, lend themselves to race discriminations.

That actual race distinctions still persist outside the South is shown by recent decisions. For instance, within a year, the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, in reducing damages awarded in the court below to a Negro porter for false imprisonment, held that by reason of his race, he did not suffer as much damage as would a white man under like circumstances. The