ORIGIN OF SEPARATE SCHOOLS.
In extenuation of the Boston system, it is sometimes said that the separation of white and black children was originally made at the request of colored parents. This is substantially true. It appears from the interesting letter of Dr. Belknap, in reply to Judge Tucker's queries respecting Slavery in Massachusetts, at the close of the last century, that no discrimination on account of color existed then in the Common Schools of Boston. "The same provision," he says, "is made by the public for the education of the children of the blacks as for those of the whites. In this town the Committee who superintend the free schools have given in charge to the schoolmasters to receive and instruct black children as well as white." Dr. Belknap had "not heard of more than three or four who had taken advantage of this privilege, though the number of blacks in Boston probably exceeded one thousand."[46] Much I fear that the inhuman bigotry of Caste—sad relic of the servitude from which they had just escaped—was at this time too strong to allow colored children kindly welcome in the free schools, and that, from timidity and ignorance, they hesitated to take a place on the same benches with the white children. Perhaps the prejudice was so inveterate that they could not venture to assert their rights. In 1800 a petition from sixty-six colored persons was presented to the School Committee, requesting the establishment of a school for their benefit. Some time later, private munificence came to the aid of this work, and the present system of separate schools was brought into being.
These are interesting incidents belonging to the history of the Boston schools, but they cannot in any way affect the rights of colored people or the powers of the School Committee. These rights and these powers stand on the Constitution and Laws. Without adopting the suggestion of Jefferson, that one generation cannot by legislation bind its successors, all must agree that the assent of a few to an unconstitutional and illegal course nearly half a century ago, when their rights were imperfectly understood, cannot alter the Constitution and the Laws so as to bind their descendants forever in the thrall of Caste. Nor can the Committee derive from this assent, or from any lapse of time, powers in derogation of the Constitution and the Rights of Man.
It is clear that the sentiments of the colored people have now changed. The present case, and the deep interest which they manifest in it, thronging the Court to watch this discussion, attest the change. With increasing knowledge they have learned to know their rights, and feel the degradation to which they are doomed. In them revives the spirit of Paul, even as when he demanded, "Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman, and uncondemned?" Their present effort is the token of a manly character, which this Court will respect and cherish.
EVILS OF SEPARATE SCHOOLS.
But it is said that these separate schools are for the benefit of both colors, and of the Public Schools. In similar spirit Slavery is sometimes said to be for the benefit of master and slave, and of the country where it exists. There is a mistake in the one case as great as in the other. This is clear. Nothing unjust, nothing ungenerous, can be for the benefit of any person or any thing. From some seeming selfish superiority, or from the gratified vanity of class, short-sighted mortals may hope to draw permanent good; but even-handed justice rebukes these efforts and redresses the wrong. The whites themselves are injured by the separation. Who can doubt this? With the Law as their monitor, they are taught to regard a portion of the human family, children of God, created in his image, coequals in his love, as a separate and degraded class; they are taught practically to deny that grand revelation of Christianity, the Brotherhood of Man. Hearts, while yet tender with childhood, are hardened, and ever afterward testify to this legalized uncharitableness. Nursed in the sentiments of Caste, receiving it with the earliest food of knowledge, they are unable to eradicate it from their natures, and then weakly and impiously charge upon our Heavenly Father the prejudice derived from an unchristian school. Their characters are debased, and they become less fit for the duties of citizenship.
The Helots of Sparta were obliged to intoxicate themselves, that by example they might teach the deformity of intemperance. Thus sacrificing one class to the other, both were injured,—the imperious Spartan and the abased Helot. The School Committee of Boston act with similar double-edged injustice in sacrificing the colored children to the prejudice or fancied advantage of the white.
A child should be taught to shun wickedness, and, as he is yet plastic under impressions, to shun wicked men. Horace was right, when, speaking of a person morally wrong, false, and unjust, he calls him black, and warns against him:—