Cumming v. Board of Education of Richmond County, 175 U.S. 528 [Segregation]
1899, Richmond County, Georgia
Court Opinion Delivered by: Justice John Marshall Harlan
Attorney for the Plaintiff: George F. Edmunds
Attorney for the Defendant: J. Ganahl, Frank H. Miller
This was the first case to apply the separate-but-equal doctrine to education. Richmond County, Georgia maintained only a white high school, claiming that it could not afford to operate both a black and white school. A unanimous Supreme Court ruled that the county had little choice but to provide only one school in view of its finances because the alternative would be no school at all for anyone. No black students would benefit by such an action. Speaking for the majority, Justice John Marshall Harlan, the lone dissenter in Plessy v. Ferguson, made it clear that separation would be the ruling order of the day and would be allowed over the imposition of the equality principal in such cases.