The object of the amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either. Laws permitting, and even requiring, their separation in places where they are liable to be brought into contact do not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the other, and have generally, if not universally, been recognized as within the competency of the State legislatures in the exercise of their police power. _The most common instance of this is connected with the establishment of separate schools for white and colored children, which has been held to be a valid exercise of the legislative power even by courts of States where the political rights of the colored race have been longest and most earnestly enforced._ [Emphasis supplied.] What was the primary question the United States Supreme Court asked in the _Brown_ case in June 1953? This was the question: Whether the Congress that submitted the Fourteenth Amendment, and the States that ratified it, understood or contemplated that the amendment was intended to abolish segregation in public schools. We have seen that the Congress surely did not understand or contemplate this: The Congress itself provided for racially separate schools in the District of Columbia. Over a long period of years following adoption of the amendment, States both North and South continued to operate separate schools, without protest or interference of any sort from Congress. Just as plainly, the States that ratified the amendment did not understand or contemplate that it was intended to abolish segregation in schools: One after another, they provided for racially separate schools in the same breath with which they ratified the amendment.