The opinion of the court was that a decision by a State court, denying
an injunction against the maintenance by a board of education of a
high school for white children, while failing to maintain one for
Negro children also, for the reason that the funds were not sufficient
to maintain it in addition to needed primary schools for Negro
children, does not constitute a denial to persons of color of the
equal protection of the law or equal privileges of citizens of the
United States. The court held that under the circumstances disclosed
it could not say that this action of the State court was, within the
meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, a denial by the State to the
plaintiffs and to those associated with them of the equal protection
of the laws, or of any privileges belonging to them as citizens of the
United States. While the court admitted that the benefits and burdens
of public taxation must be shared by citizens without discrimination
against any class on account of their race, it held that the education
of 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 case of a clear unmistakable disregard of rights
secured by the supreme law of the land.

This is downright sophistry. To any sane man it could not but be
evident that this was an "unmistakable disregard of rights secured by
the Supreme law of the land." The school authorities had separated
white and Negro children for purposes of education on account of race
and had, moreover, refused to grant the Negro children the facilities
equal to those of the white. The State, in the first place, in
establishing separate schools on the basis of race, violated a right
guaranteed the Negro race by the Constitution of the United States,
and the board of education of Richmond County violated still another
in failing to provide for the Negroes the same facilities for high
school education as those furnished the whites while taxing all
citizens without regard to race. It is true that the Federal
Government cannot generally interfere in matters of police regulation
of persons and property in the States but when the matter of race is
introduced the national authority is thoroughly competent within the
Constitution to restrain such local government or any group of persons
so authorized by such government. It would ha