In the Supreme Court of the State of California. Mary Frances Ward…vs. Noah F. Flood…
[Legal issues]. In The Supreme Court of the State of California. Mary Frances Ward...vs. Noah F. Flood...San Francisco: B. F. Street, 1872.
8vo.; printed tan wrappers, sewn, spine occasionally perforated at stitching; discreet de-accession stamp on front wrapper.
First edition of the proceedings of one of the earliest and most important school desegregation cases brought by a young black female plaintiff. In July 1872 Mary Frances Ward attempted in vain to enroll at the Broadway Grammar School in San Francisco, California. Principal Noah P. Flood refused to admit the seventh grader into the all white primary school on the grounds that attendance by Negroes at white institutions was prohibited by the city’s Board of Education. Less than two months later, attorney John W. Dwinelle filed a complaint in State Supreme Court on behalf of Ward who, as a minor, could not bring the suit directly, alleging that Flood’s actions were a violation of Ward’s Constitutional rights. Specifically, Ward and Dwinelle’s suit challenged the validity of the United States’ segregated educational system as embodied in Flood’s upholding of the Board’s regulation Section 117, which stipulated that “...Children of African or Indian descent shall not be admitted into schools for white children, but separate schools shall be provided for them...”
Sadly, the court’s decision in Ward vs. Flood effectively codified segregated education in California, a previously progressive region. Citing as precedent the ignominious Roberts vs. City of Boston case thirty-five years earlier, Judge C.J. Wallace ruled that Flood’s actions were not in violation of Ward’s civil rights, and on February 26, 1874 as a result of the Ward vs. Flood case the principle of separate-but-equal was inscribed in California state law.
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