How Does the Fourteenth Amendment Affect Voters?

The eleventh article of the state constitution declares that certain enumerated funds, together with any sum that may be "raised in the state by taxation or otherwise for the purposes of education, shall be held inviolate for the purpose of sustaining a system of common schools. The interest and dividends of said funds, together with any sum which may be produced for that purpose by taxation or otherwise, may be appropriated in aid of common schools, but for no other purpose."

The Revised Statutes embody the first legislation on the subject of common schools after the adoption of our present constitution. They provide that the auditor shall each year apportion the revenue arising from the school-fund "among the several counties of the state according to the number of free white children in each between the ages of six and eighteen years, as shown by the returns of the assessors in his office."

By section 1 of article 8 of the same chapter the legislature declared that its object was "to carry into effect the intention of the people of Kentucky, as expressed in their constitution, in promoting the establishment throughout the state of a system of common schools which shall be equally accessible to the poor as to the rich;" and it further declared "that every school which is put under the control of trustees and commissioners pursuant thereto, which has been actually kept three months during the year by a qualified teacher, and at which every free white child in the district between the ages of six and eighteen years has had the privilege of attending, whether contributing toward defraying the expenses or not, and none other, shall be deemed a common school within the meaning of this chapter, or entitled to contribution out of the school-fund."

This contemporaneous legislative construction of this article of the constitution has been followed in all subsequent legislation, and has been accepted as correct by all the departments of the state government.

When the proposition to increase the school-tax fifteen cents upon each one hundred dollars' worth of taxable property was submitted to the voters of the state for ratification, the act provided that the annual tax should "be levied and collected only upon the property of white persons," and be "expended for the education of white children exclusively." This act was approved on the 22d day of January, 1869, after the thirteenth and fourteenth articles of amendment to the Federal constitution had been declared adopted.

Prior to December 18, 1865, when it was officially announced that the thirteenth article had become part of the constitution of the United States, the negro population in Kentucky was generally in a state of slavery. The free negroes were not citizens of the state. They were mere residents without political rights. See Amy v. Smith.

They were not citizens of the United States, and were not capable of becoming citizens thereof. It was held, in the celebrated Dred Scott case, by the Supreme Court of the United States that a man of African descent, whether a slave or not, was not and could not be a citizen of the state or of the United States; and, notwithstanding the criticism to which this adjudication was subjected, it was never overruled; and the primary object of the fourteenth amendment was to relieve this race from the disabilities therein declared to be inherent in and inseparable from the African blood.