They may establish a separate school for the rich, that the delicate taste of this favored class may not be offended by the humble garments of the poor.
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 is a vestige of ancient intolerance directed against a despised people.
It is possible that their accommodations are as good as they would be able to occupy, if left free to choose throughout Rome and Frankfort; but this compulsory segregation from the mass of citizens is of itself an inequality which we…
A separate school, though well endowed, would not secure to them that precise Equality which they would enjoy in the Common Schools.
They have an equal right with white children to the Common Schools.
Their rights are found in Equality before the Law; nor can they be called to renounce one jot of this.
Still further,--and this consideration cannot be neglected,--the matters taught in the two schools may be precisely the same, but a school exclusively devoted to one class must differ essentially in spirit and character from that Common…
We have already seen that it is the occasion of inconvenience to colored children, which would not arise, if they had access to the nearest Common School, besides compelling parents to pay an additional tax, and inflicting upon child and…
Boston cannot do indirectly what other towns cannot do directly.
But if separate colored schools are illegal and impossible in the country, they must be illegal and impossible in Boston.
But there cannot be one law for the country and another for Boston.
Such an exercise of discretion must be unreasonable, and therefore illegal.
But the Committee cannot assume, a priori, and without individual examination, that all of an entire race are so deficient in proper moral and intellectual qualifications as to justify their universal degradation to a class by themselves.
It is when we reach the last stage of all, the children themselves, that the beautiful character of the system is changed to the deformity of Caste, as, in the picture of the ancient poet, what above was a lovely woman terminated below in…
Thus, in every department connected with our Common Schools, throughout the whole hierarchy of their government, from the very head of the system down to the humblest usher in the humblest Primary School, and to the humblest voter, there…
Is it reasonable, in the exercise of a just discretion, to separate descendants of the African race from white children merely in consequence of descent?
Here we are brought once more, in another form, to the question of the discrimination on account of color.
And this is not what the Committee or any other body of men think reasonable, but what is reasonable in the eye of the Law.
Surely they cannot, in any mere discretion, nullify a sacred and dear-bought principle of Human Plights expressly guarantied by the Constitution.
The Committee can have no discretion which is not in harmony with the Constitution and Laws.
Without questioning that they are intrusted with a discretion, it is outrageous to suppose that their discretion can go to this extent.
Not to the skin can we look for the criterion of fitness.
The fact that a child is black, or that he is white, cannot of itself be a qualification or a disqualification.
It would enable them, in the exercise of a brief and local authority, to draw a fatal circle, within which the Constitution cannot enter,--nay, where the very Bill of Rights becomes a dead letter.
To suppose that they can do this would place the Committee above the Constitution.
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