Berea College v. Kentucky
| Berea College v. Kentucky | |
|---|---|
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| Argued April 10, 13, 1908 Decided November 9, 1908 |
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| Full case name | Berea College, Plaintiff in Error, v. Commonwealth of Kentucky |
| Citations | 211 U.S. 45 (more) |
| Prior history | Affirmed, 123 Ky. 209, 94 S. W. 623. Reviewed by the Supreme Court on writ of error. |
| Holding | |
| States can legally prohibit private educational institutions chartered as corporations from admitting both black and white students. | |
| Court membership | |
| Case opinions | |
| Majority | Brewer, joined by Fuller, White, Peckham, McKenna |
| Concurrence | Holmes (in the judgment of the court only) |
| Concurrence | Moody (in the judgment of the court only) |
| Dissent | Harlan |
| Dissent | Day |
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Overruled by
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| Brown v. Board of Education, 1954 | |
Berea College v. Kentucky, 211 U.S. 45 (1908) was a significant case argued before the United States Supreme Court that upheld the rights of states to prohibit private educational institutions chartered as corporations from admitting both black and white students. Like the related Plessy v. Ferguson 163 U.S. 537 (1896) case, it was also marked by a strongly worded dissent by John Marshall Harlan. The ruling also is a minor landmark on the nature of corporate personhood.
Berea College is a coeducational and desegregated school founded in 1855, admitting both blacks and whites students and treating them without discrimination. In 1904, the "Day Law" (named for Carl Day, a Democrat from Breathitt County, Kentucky who had introduced the bill in the Kentucky House of Representatives) was passed by the Kentucky legislature, prohibiting any person, group of people, or corporation from the teaching of black and white students in the same school, or from running separate branches of a school for the teaching of black and white students within twenty-five miles of each other. Since at the time Berea was the only such integrated school in Kentucky (and the only such college in the South), it was clearly the target of this law. After Berea College's challenge to the law failed before the Kentucky Court of Appeals (although the distance provision was struck down), the case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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