having in charge the registration of electors shall enforce the
provisions of this section at the time of registration, provided
registration be required. Should registration be dispensed with,
the provisions of this section shall be enforced by the precinct
officer when electors apply for ballots to vote."

The court held that this was a standard of voting which on its face
was in substance but a revitalization of conditions which when they
prevailed in the past had been destroyed by the self-operative force
of the Thirteenth Amendment.

EDUCATIONAL PRIVILEGES

These suffrage laws left the Negroes in an untoward situation for the
reason that there was little hope that, with the educational
facilities afforded them, that they would soon be able to meet the
same requirement of literacy as that which might not embarrass the
whites offering themselves as jurors and electors. The States upheld
in their action by the United States Supreme Court, had shifted from
their shoulders the burden of the uplift of the Negro by the ingenious
doctrine that equal accommodations did not mean identical
accommodations and that the spirit and the letter of the law would be
complied with by providing separate accommodations for Negroes. In the
end, however, separate accommodations turned out to be in some cases
no accommodations at all.

This was the situation as it was brought out in the case of _Cumming_
v. _The Board of Education of Richmond County_.[71] It appeared that a
tax for schools had been levied in this district. The Negroes objected
to paying that portion of the tax which provided for the maintenance
of a high school, the benefits of which they were denied, when there
was no high school provided for them. The board of education of
Richmond County had maintained a high school for Negroes but abolished
it. The petitioner prayed, therefore, that an injunction be granted
against the collection of such portion of the school tax as was used
for the maintenance of said high school. The defendant set up the plea
that it had not established a white high school, but had merely
appropriated some money to assist a denominational high school for
white children, saying "that it had to choose between maintaining the
lower schools for a large number of Negroes and providing a high
school for about sixty." The board of education, declared, moreover,
that the establishment of a Negro high school was merely postponed.