It’s Still Legal to Have Segregated Schools in Alabama and Other Jim Crow Laws on the Books

It began with a group of them, student and faculty researchers working together to highlight a problem in local and state laws. In the end, the Jim Crow Study group out of the University of Arizona discovered segregation-era laws that were still on the books in several southern states.

They released their report in 2004, calling for a legislative review and repeal of those laws. But 15 years later, some of those laws are still in place.

“There has not been an across the board systematic effort to clean up the laws. Some states did and some didn’t,” said Gabriel “Jack” Chin, a former member of the now defunct group. Some of the highlighted cases focused on segregation-era laws in the school system.

It’s now 65years since the United States Supreme Court found the principle of “separate but equal” educational facilities to be unconstitutional with the Brown v. Board of Education decision. But laws passed to ensure racial segregation in public schools remain on the books.

“They were intended to support racial segregation and avoid compliance with the United States Constitution,” Chin had said in a statement released in 2004. “They should be remembered as part of our painful history, not part of our current law.”

During the Jim Crow Era, legislatures on state and local levels passed a series of laws that separated black and whites in public places such as malls, parks, cemeteries, restaurants and schools. They were enforced until 1965.

But these laws, which were enacted during the 19^th and 20^th centuries after the Reconstruction period, were more than a body of legislative acts that barred black people from enjoying the same freedom as whites. They were a way of life.

“They touched on all areas of life in all parts of the country,” said Chin, a professor at UC Davis School of Law in California. And the laws still on the books “help illustrate the point that this was a systemic part of American life.”

Of the cases they highlighted regarding the school system in 2004, Chin discovered that at least four were still on the books.

 School Segregation Still Legal in One State

The Alabama Constitution still allows parents to choose to send their children to schools provided for their race only. A version is still on the books, Chin said. The provision is found in the text under Section 256: Duty of Legislature to Establish and Maintain Public School System; Apportionment of Public School Fund; Separate Schools for White and Colored Children.

“The legislature shall establish, organize, and maintain a liberal system of public schools throughout the state for the benefit of the children thereof between the ages of seven and twenty-one years. The public school fund shall be apportioned to the several counties in proportion to the number of school children of school age therein, and shall be so apportioned to the schools in districts or townships in the counties as to provide, as nearly as practicable, school terms of equal duration in such school districts of townships. Separate schools shall be provided for white and colored children, and no child of either race shall be permitted to attend a school of the other race.”

A Mississippi law retains a provision allowing closure of close proximity public schools if they are integrated, Chin said. And a South Carolina law continues to authorize tuition grants for students in segregated public schools, he said.

Also, still on the books is a Virginia law containing provisions that allow suspension of compulsory education laws if schools are integrated, he said.

But, he said, some of the laws they highlighted in 2004 have been repealed, including:

A Georgia law designed to allow teachers at segregated private schools to join desirable state pension programs.  A Missouri law that referred to a segregated reform school for “Negroes” is no longer on the books. Louisiana laws that authorize the closing of integrated public schools, and the payment of salaries of teachers who are imprisoned for resisting integration have been removed. And, a West Virginia statute that was used to limit the number of African Americans hired as public school supervisors is also relegated to history.

In the cases where proposals to repeal the laws were rejected, Chin said there is one often used argument: “It’s not being enforced, so why waste time repealing a law that is not enforced.”

But sometimes that’s not the case, Chin said. He gave an example of a deed that may restrict the selling of a property to a person of another race. The holder of that deed may enforce that restriction without having to tell the person wishing to buy why they have been rejected.

“Sometimes people do enforce laws that they don’t know is unconstitutional,” he said.