Lum v. Rice

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lum v. Rice

Submitted October 12, 1927
Decided November 21, 1927


Full case name:	Gong Lum at al. v. Rice et al.

Citations:	275 U.S. 78
Prior history:	Trial court ordered writ of mandamus. Reversed by Supreme Court of Mississippi, 139 Miss. 760, 104 So. 105.

Subsequent history:	Affirmed, 139 Miss. 760.

Holding

Upheld the "separate but equal" policy in public schools.

Court membership

Chief Justice: William Howard Taft
Associate Justices: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Willis Van Devanter, James Clark McReynolds, Louis Brandeis, George Sutherland, Pierce Butler, Edward Terry Sanford, Harlan Fiske Stone

Case opinions

Majority by: Taft
Joined by: unanimous court

Overruled by

Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 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.