By the Constitutional Amendment abolishing Slavery Congress is empowered “to enforce this article by appropriate legislation”; and in pursuance thereof the Civil Rights Law was enacted.
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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It cannot be said, according to its title, that all persons are protected in their civil rights, so long as the outrages I expose continue to exist; nor is Slavery entirely dead.
If the Civil Rights Law is above question, as cannot be doubted, then also is this supplementary amendment; for it is only the complement of the other, and necessary to its completion.
But, pray, Sir, do not pretend that this is the great equality promised by our fathers.
There are millions of fellow-citizens guilty of no offence except the dusky livery of the sun appointed by the Heavenly Father, whom you treat as others have treated the Jews, as the Brahmin treats the Sudra.
Down to a recent period in Europe the Jews were driven to herd by themselves, separate from the Christians; but this discarded barbarism is revived among us in the ban of color.
Religion and reason condemn Caste as impious and unchristian, making republican institutions and equal laws impossible; but here is Caste not unlike that which separates the Sudra from the Brahmin.
Every such assumption is an indignity to the colored race, instinct with the spirit of Slavery; and this decides its character.
Assuming--what is most absurd to assume, and what is contradicted by all experience--that a substitute can be an equivalent, it is so in form only, and not in reality.
In the process of substitution the vital elixir exhales and escapes: it is lost, and cannot be recovered; for Equality is found only in Equality.
Even if accommodations are the same, as notoriously they are not, there is no Equality.
There can be no substitute for Equality,--nothing but itself.
Separation implies one thing for a white person and another thing for a colored person; but Equality is where all have the same alike.
How vain to argue that there is no denial of Equal Rights when this separation is enforced!
And this is the contrivance by which a transcendent right, involving a transcendent duty, is evaded: for Equality is not only a right, but a duty.
Separate hotels, separate conveyances, separate theatres, separate schools and institutions of learning and science, separate churches, and separate cemeteries,--these are the artificial substitutes.
In the days of Slavery it was an oft-repeated charge, that Emancipation was a measure of social equality; and the same charge became a cry at the successive efforts for the right to testify and the right to vote.
He walks the streets, but always subject to the prevailing law of Equality; nor can he appropriate the sidewalk to his own exclusive use, driving into the gutter all whose skin is less white than his own.
His house is his “castle”; and this very designation, borrowed from the Common Law, shows his absolute independence within its walls; nor is there any difference, whether it be palace or hovel.
Each person, whether Senator or citizen, is always free to choose who shall be his friend, his associate, his guest.
Where is justice, if this ban of color is not promptly removed?
Where is that great promise by which “the pursuit of happiness” is placed, with life and liberty, under the safeguard of axiomatic, self-evident truth?
What is the National Government, coextensive with the Republic, if fellow-citizens, counted by the million, can be shut out from equal rights in travel, in recreation, in education, and in other things, all contributing to human…
What is the Republic, if it fails in this loyalty?
With this mighty truth as a guiding principle, the National Constitution is elevated, and made more than ever a protection to the citizen.
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