But this can be only where all commingle in the common school as in common citizenship.
Charles Sumner
The Public Record
Charles Sumner was an American lawyer and statesman who represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1851 until his death in 1874. Before and during the American Civil War, he was a leading American advocate for the abolition of slavery, and after the war he was a key figure in the Reconstruction era, during which he and other Radical Republicans successfully fought to end slavery and ensure basic rights for Black Americans. He continued advocating for racial equality until his death, lobbying in his final days for a civil rights bill that served as a model for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Historians credit Sumner with coining the phrase "equality before the law," which he first used as part of an early attempt to integrate Boston's public school system.
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How precious the example which teaches that all are equal in rights!
Children learn by example more than by precept.
Better even than knowledge is a kindly nature and the sentiment of equality.
The Pharisaism of race becomes an element of character, when, like all other Pharisaisms, it should be cast out.
The prejudice of color is nursed, when it should be stifled.
Will not the Republic, redeemed by most costly sacrifice, insist upon justice to the children of the land, making the common school the benign example of republican institutions, where merit is the only ground of favor?
Surely the race enslaved for generations has suffered enough without being doomed to this prolonged proscription.
This is plain oppression, which you, Sir, would feel keenly, were it directed against you or your child.
He is pinched and dwarfed while the stigma of color is stamped upon him.
How can he grow up to the stature of equal citizenship?
The child is not trained in the way he should go; for he is trained under the ban of Inequality.
The separate school wants the first requisite of the common school, inasmuch as it is not equally open to all; and since this is inconsistent with the declared rule of republican institutions, such a school is not republican in character.
The indignity offered to the colored child is worse than any compulsory exposure; and here not only the child suffers, but the race to which he belongs is degraded, and the whole community is hardened in wrong.
This is an illustration merely, but it shows precisely how impossible it is for a separate school to be the equivalent of the common school.
What must be the feelings of a colored father or mother daily witnessing this sacrifice to the demon of Caste?
The superadded pedestrianism and its attendant discomfort furnish the measure of Inequality in one of its forms, increased by the weakness or ill-health of the child.
Now it is idle to assert that children compelled to this exceptional journey to and fro are in the enjoyment of Equal Rights.
This could not have occurred, had the child been received at the common school in the neighborhood.
Colored children, living near what is called the common school, are driven from its doors, and compelled to walk a considerable distance--often troublesome, and in certain conditions of the weather difficult--to attend the separate school.
It is easy to see that the separate school, founded on an odious discrimination, and sometimes offered as an equivalent for the common school, is an ill-disguised violation of the principle of Equality, while as a pretended equivalent it…
It is a theatre where children resort for enduring recreation.
It is a public conveyance where children are passengers.
It is an inn where children rest on the road to knowledge.
It is not a school for whites, or a school for blacks, but a school for all,--in other words, a common school.
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