They did not feel the inconvenience of the tax, but they felt its oppression.
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 was a paltry tax on tea, laid by a Parliament where they were not represented, that aroused our fathers to the struggles of the Revolution.
If it be met by the suggestion, that the inconvenience is trivial, and such as the law will not notice, I reply, that it is precisely such as to reveal an existing inequality, and therefore the law cannot fail to notice it.
He is obliged to go for it, to travel for it, to walk for it,--often a great distance.
But it is not brought to every black man's door.
I am at a loss to understand how anybody can assert that they are.
Here the facts are plain and unanswerable, showing a palpable violation of Equality.
It is easy to see that the exclusion of colored children from the Public Schools is a constant inconvenience to them and their parents, which white children and white parents are not obliged to bear.
They cannot lawfully omit any, and thus deprive them of the benefits of our invaluable system of free schools." Thus at every point the Court has guarded the Equal Rights of all.
Nor is it in the power of the majority to deprive the minority of this privilege....
The schools required by the statute are to be maintained for the benefit of the whole town, as it is the wise policy of the law to give all the inhabitants equal privileges for the education of their children in the Public Schools.
The Courts of Massachusetts, in harmony with the Constitution and the Laws, have never recognized any discrimination founded on race or color, in the administration of the Common Schools, but have constantly declared the equal rights of…
In the eye of the law there is but one class, where all interests, opinions, conditions, and colors commingle in harmony,--excluding none, therefore comprehending all.
There is nothing establishing an exclusive or separate school for any particular class, rich or poor, Catholic or Protestant, white or black.
This is the Common School, equally free to all the inhabitants.
There is no language recognizing any discrimination of race or color.
If we examine the text of this statute, we shall find nothing to sustain the rule of exclusion which has been set up.
The language of the statutes is general, and applies equally to all children, of whatever race or color.
But the Legislature has been too just and generous, too mindful of the Bill of Rights, to establish any such privilege of birth.
Any such discrimination by the Laws would be unconstitutional and void.
Here nobility cannot exist, because it is a privilege from birth.
The State, imitating the divine justice, is no respecter of persons.
To some it may justly allot higher duties, according to higher capacities; but it welcomes all to its equal hospitable board.
He is one of the children of the State, which, like an impartial parent, regards all its offspring with an equal care.
He is not poor, weak, humble, or black; nor is he Caucasian, Jew, Indian, or Ethiopian; nor is he French, German, English, or Irish; he is a MAN, the equal of all his fellow-men.
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