ve been unwise for the
court to enjoin the collection of such a tax but it could have on the
constitutional points raised in this case declared invalid laws
separating the races for purposes of education.

The sophistry of the Supreme Court in seeking to justify its refusal
to maintain the rights of the Negro to education is still more evident
from its opinion in the case of _Berea College_ v. _The Commonwealth
of Kentucky_, decided in 1908. Berea College was established in 1856
by a group of antislavery Kentucky mountaineers, led by John G. Fee,
desiring to bring up their children in the love of free institutions.
There were no Negro students prior to the Civil War but a few Negro
soldiers were admitted on returning home from the front in their
uniforms and members of the race were thereafter welcomed at Berea. In
the course of time, however, this coeducation of the races became very
distasteful to the State of Kentucky with its decided increase in race
prejudice necessitating in their economy a thorough proscription of
the Negro race. In 1904, therefore, the State of Kentucky enacted a
law against persons and corporations maintaining schools for both
white persons and Negroes.

Feeling that its charter was violated by this law and also that it
infringed upon the rights guaranteed the Negro in the Constitution of
the United States, Berea College attacked the validity of this measure
in the inferior courts and finally in the Supreme Court of the United
States. The plaintiff unanswerably contended that this Kentucky law
abridged one's privileges and immunities, in violation of the
Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, which
was a limitation on the police power of the State when it brings in
the matter of race. It further contended that the Constitution makes
no distinction between races and that the Fourteenth Amendment is not
only to protect Negroes but to protect white persons in the enjoyment
of their rights. The plaintiff admitted that social equality could not
be enforced by legislation but contended that voluntary social
equality of persons cannot be constitutionally prohibited, unless it
is shown that such is immoral, disorderly, or for some other reason so
palpably injurious to the public welfare as to justify direct
interference with the personal liberty of the citizens.

Evidently wishing to find some ground upon which it could base its
opinion upholding the Supreme Court of Kentucky