Lum v. Rice

SCOTUSCase
Litigants=Lum v. Rice
SubmitDate=October 12
SubmitYear=1927
DecideDate=November 21
DecideYear=1927
FullName=Gong Lum, et al. v. Rice et al.
USVol=275
USPage=78
Citation=
Prior=Trial court ordered writ of mandamus. Reversed by Supreme Court of Mississippi, 139 Miss. 760, 104 So. 105.
Subsequent=Affirmed, 139 Miss. 760.
Holding=Upheld the "separate but equal" policy in public schools.
SCOTUS=1925-1930
Majority=Taft
JoinMajority="unanimous court"
LawsApplied=
Overruled="Brown v. Board of Education", ussc|347|483|1954

"Lum v. Rice", 275 U.S. 78 (1927), is a famous case decided by the United States Supreme Court. The decision effectively approved the exclusion of minority children from schools reserved for whites.

In 1924, a nine-year old Chinese-American named Martha Lum, daughter of Gong Lum, was prohibited from attending the Rosedale Consolidated High School in Bolivar County, Mississippi solely because she was of Chinese descent.

There was no school in the district maintained for Chinese students, and she was forced by compulsory attendance laws to attend school.

A lower court granted the plaintiff's request of a writ of mandamus to force the members of the Board of Trustees to admit Martha Lum. It should be noted that Gong Lum's case was not that racial discrimination as such was illegal, but that his daughter, being Chinese, had incorrectly been classified as "colored" by the authorities.

Since the ruling went against them, the Board of Trustees became the plaintiff and Lum was named the defendant in the case "Rice v. Gong Lum", which was heard in the Supreme Court of Mississippi. The state Supreme Court reversed the lower court's decision and allowed the board of trustees to exclude Martha Lum from the school for white children.

Gong Lum appealed the state Supreme Court's ruling to the federal Supreme Court. In an opinion written by Chief Justice William Howard Taft, the Supreme Court affirmed the state Supreme Court's ruling and thus the position of the board of trustees. Martha Lum was not allowed to go to the school for white children.

ee also

*"Plessy v. Ferguson", (1897)
*"Brown v. Board of Education", (1954)

Further reading

*cite journal |last=Payne |first=Charles |authorlink= |coauthors= |year=1984 |month= |title=Multicultural Education and Racism in American Schools |journal=Theory into Practice |volume=23 |issue=2 |pages=124–131 |doi=10.2307/1476441 |url= |accessdate= |quote=

External links

* [http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=case&court=us&vol=275&page=78 275 U.S. 78] Full text of the opinion courtesy of Findlaw.com.