Evans v. Newton

1966-01-18

Headline: Court bars racial segregation in a historic Georgia park by treating a privately titled park as a public institution, reversing a state ruling and blocking whites-only control under private trustees.

Holding: The Court held that a park long run as a city facility remains a public institution subject to the Fourteenth Amendment, so it cannot be maintained as a whites-only park even if private trustees now hold title.

Real World Impact:

Stops preserving whites-only parks by transferring title to private trustees.
Treats long-used public facilities as subject to constitutional equality rules.
Limits use of charitable trusts or statutes to evade equal protection.

Topics: park segregation, equal protection, public vs private control, charitable trusts

Summary

Background

A Georgia park was created by Senator Augustus Bacon’s 1911 will, which said the land should be “a park and pleasure ground” for white people only and named white managers. The City of Macon served as trustee for years, maintaining the park. When the city later refused to enforce segregation and resigned as trustee, a state court approved the city’s resignation and appointed private trustees; the Georgia Supreme Court upheld that decision. Black citizens intervened, arguing the racial limit violated national law, and the case reached this Court.

Reasoning

The central question was whether the park, although placed in private trustees’ hands, remained government-linked and therefore subject to the Fourteenth Amendment’s ban on state-sponsored racial inequality. The majority said the park had long been treated as a municipal facility and served a public function like a city park, so the substitution of private trustees did not strip it of its public character. Because the park remained entwined with municipal activity and served the public, operating it on a whites-only basis would be state action forbidden by the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court reversed the Georgia decision.

Real world impact

The ruling prevents cities and courts from escaping constitutional limits simply by handing formerly municipal parks to private trustees to continue racial exclusion. It signals that publicly used facilities retain constitutional protections regardless of who holds title. The case also raised questions about state statutes and charitable trusts used to justify segregated facilities, which some Justices discussed.

Dissents or concurrances

Justice White agreed with reversal but relied instead on Georgia statutes that had authorized racially limited park trusts. Justices Black and Harlan dissented, arguing the record and state-law issues did not clearly present a federal constitutional question and that state courts’ actions should stand.