Gong Lum v. Rice

Gong Lum v. Rice (1927) stands out as the case within which the U.S. Supreme Court explicitly extended the pernicious doctrine of “separate but equal” that it introduced at the national level to public education in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). At issue in Gong Lum, which was decided 27 years prior to Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), were two related issues. The first issue was whether the state of Mississippi was required to provide a Chinese citizen equal protection of the law under the Fourteenth Amendment when he was taxed to pay for public education but was forced to send his daughter to a school for children of color. The second question that the Court addressed was whether the state denied a ...