Jim Crow laws remain on the books

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), August, 2004

A half-century after the Supreme Court found the principle of "separate but equal" educational facilities to be unconstitutional, laws passed to ensure racial division in public schools remain on the books. At least eight southern states have kept segregationist laws and those statutes continue to influence educational policy, according to a University of Arizona, Tucson, report, "Still on the Books: Jim Crow and Segregation Laws Fifty Years After Brown v. Board of Education," which calls for legislative review and repeal of provisions in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia.

Among the old laws still present in state statutes are: the Alabama Constitution allows parents to choose to send their children to schools provided for their race only; a Georgia ordinance designed to permit teachers at segregated private schools to join desirable state pension programs; Louisiana has statutes to authorize the termination of integrated public schools as well as the payment of salaries of teachers who are imprisoned for resisting integration; Mississippi retains a precept allowing closure of neighboring public schools if they are integrated; Missouri law refers to a separatist reform school for "Negroes"; South Carolina authorizes tuition grants for students in segregated public schools; Virginia retains provisions allowing suspension of compulsory education laws if schools are integrated; and a West Virginia statute limits the number of African-Americans hired as public school supervisors.

Although some of the identified laws no longer are enforced or have been held unconstitutional in the courts, the statutes continue to have effects. Some former teachers at segregated private schools currently are receiving public pensions while segregated private schools continue to benefit from donations of real property by the states.

"I think it says something about where our society is today that no one has bothered to go back and repeal these offensive statutes," posits Gabriel Chin, professor of law at the University of Arizona's Rogers College of Law. "They were intended to support racial segregation and avoid compliance with the United States Constitution. They should be remembered as part of our painful history, net part of our current law."