And if one seeks in the judicial pronouncements of the day for independent evidence of what the Congress and the States understood and contemplated the amendment to mean the evidence is overwhelming: The power of the States to maintain separate schools was “generally, if not universally” held to be completely in accord with the Fourteenth Amendment. The seven justices who united in _Plessy_ were all mature men at the time the amendment became effective in 1868. Edward D. White of Louisiana, the youngest, was then twenty-three, Brown of Michigan was thirty-two, Fuller of Illinois thirty-five, Field of California fifty-two, Gray of Massachusetts forty, Shiras of Pennsylvania, thirty-six, and Peckham of New York thirty. From a standpoint of constitutional law, who could have known the understanding and contemplation of the amendment better than they? They grew up with it. And in 1896, when they handed down the Plessy opinion, they were men of fifty-one to eighty, in a position to look back maturely upon twenty-eight years of political life under the Fourteenth Amendment. The other two questions of a general nature posed by the Supreme Court in June 1953 may be dealt with more briefly. Much of the ground has been covered already. These were: _Question 2: If neither the Congress in submitting nor the States in ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment understood that compliance with it would require the immediate abolition of segregation in public schools, was it nevertheless the understanding of the framers of the amendment_ _(a) that future Congresses might, in the exercise of their power under Section 5 of the amendment, abolish such segregation, or_ _(b) that it would be within the judicial power, in the light of future conditions, to construe the amendment as abolishing such segregation of its own force?_ _Question 3: On the assumption that the answers to Questions 2 (a) and (b) do not dispose of the issue, is it within the judicial power, in construing the amendment, to abolish segregation in public schools?_ Question 2 (a) may best be answered by studying the Fourteenth Amendment in terms of political power. What is the Fourteenth? Obviously, it is first of all a prohibition upon the States. It is not primarily a grant of power to the Congress. Its thrust is negative: The States shall not make; the States shall not enforce; the States shall not abridge; the States shall not deprive; the States shall not deny. Section 3 carries an incidental delegation of power to the Congress, authorizing the removal of political disabilities imposed upon Confederate soldiers, and Section 5 vests in the Congress a power “to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”