## Facts

- Senator Augustus O. Bacon devised land to the Mayor and Council of Macon, Georgia, to operate as a park for white people only under a white board of managers.
- Macon accepted the devise, maintained the property as part of its municipal park system, and treated it as tax-exempt public property.
- As desegregation requirements constrained municipal segregation, the city opened the park to Black residents and declined to enforce the racial restriction.
- Members of the board of managers sued in Georgia state court to remove the city as trustee and to appoint private trustees to enforce the “whites only” condition.
- Black citizens intervened, alleging that enforcing the racial restriction would violate the Equal Protection Clause.
- The city sought to resign as trustee; certain heirs intervened seeking reversion if the racially restricted trust could not be administered.
- The Georgia trial court accepted the city’s resignation and appointed private trustees; the Georgia Supreme Court affirmed on charitable trust grounds.
- The intervenors sought review in the U.S. Supreme Court.

## Issues

1. Whether operation of a park that has functioned as part of a city’s public park system constitutes state action subject to the Fourteenth Amendment.
2. Whether appointing private trustees to operate the park as “whites only” eliminates state action and permits racial segregation.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed the Georgia Supreme Court.
- The Court held that operating the park was a public function of a municipal character and therefore involved state action.
- Substituting private trustees did not convert the park into purely private activity where the park’s public character and history of municipal control were firmly established.
- Because the park’s operation remained subject to the Equal Protection Clause, racial segregation in its operation was unconstitutional.

## Legal Principles

- Private parties performing functions governmental in nature, or operating facilities that serve a traditional municipal role, may be treated as state actors for Fourteenth Amendment purposes.
- A State cannot avoid constitutional limits by transferring formal control of a public facility to private trustees while preserving its public character and community function.
- Public recreational facilities that operate as municipal services must comply with the Equal Protection Clause and may not be administered on a racially segregated basis.

## Conclusion

A park that had become an integral part of a city’s public park system remained a public institution for Fourteenth Amendment purposes, and the State could not maintain racial segregation by replacing the city trustee with private trustees.


Evans v. Newton, 382 U.S. 296 (1966)