Now that it is proposed to apply the same principle to the schools, we are again assured, with equal seriousness and gravity, that, though correct in principle, it is not practical. Sir, I take issue on that general proposition. I insist that whatever is correct in principle is practical. Anything else would make this world a failure, and obedience to the laws of God impossible.
The provision which my friend would strike out is simply to carry into education the same principle which we have carried into the court-room, into the horse-car, and to the ballot-box: that is all. If there be any argument in favor of the provision in these other cases, allow me to say that it is stronger in the school-room, inasmuch as the child is more impressionable than the man. You should not begin life with a rule that sanctions a prejudice. Therefore do I insist, especially for the sake of children, for the sake of those tender years most susceptible to human influence, that we should banish a rule which will make them grow up with a separation which will be to them a burden: a burden to the white; for every prejudice is a burden to him who has it; and a burden to the black, who will suffer always under the degradation.
With what consistency can you deny to the child equal rights in the school-room and then give him equal rights at the ballot-box? Having already accorded equal rights at the ballot-box, I insist upon his equal right in the school-room also. One is the complement of the other. It is not enough to give him a separate school, where he may have the same kind of education with the white child. He will not have the same kind of education. Every child, white or black, has a right to be placed under precisely the same influences, with the same teachers, in the same school-room, without any discrimination founded on his color. You disown distinctions of sect: why keep up those of color?
A great protection to the colored child, and a great assurance of his education, will be that he is educated on the same benches and by the same teachers with the white child. You may give him what is sometimes called an equivalent in another school; but this is not equality. His right is to equality, and not to equivalency. He has equality only when he comes into your common-school and finds no exclusion there on account of his skin.
Strike out this provision, and you will say to the children of this District: “There is a prejudice of color which we sanction; continue it; grow up with it in your souls.” And worse still, the prejudice which you sanction will extend from this centre over the whole country. This is a centre, and not a corner. What we do here will be an example in distant places.
My friend says that this provision will hurt the schools. Pardon me; he is mistaken. It will help the schools. Everything that brings the schools into harmony with great principles and with divine truth must help them. Anything that makes them antagonistic to great principles and to divine truth hurts them. Strike out this provision, and you hurt them seriously, vitally,—you stab them here in the house of their friends. In a bill to promote education you deal it a fatal blow.
Sir, as I cherish education, as I love freedom, as at all times I stand by human rights, so do I cherish, love, and stand by this safeguard. It is worth the whole bill. Strike it out, and the bill is too poor to be adopted. If it should be passed, thus shorn,—I say it, Sir, because I must say it,—it will bring disgrace upon Congress.
To the colored people here we owe, certainly, equality; we owe to them the practical recognition of the promises of the Declaration of Independence; and still further, we must see that the common schools of this District are an example throughout the country. We cannot afford to do less. Everywhere throughout the region lately cursed by Slavery this dark prejudice still lingers and lowers. From our vantage-ground here we must strike it, and, according to our power, destroy it. But if the proposition of my friend prevails, you will encourage and foster it.
Now, Sir, against the statement of my friend, the Chairman, I oppose the statement of experts,—I oppose a statement which, I venture to say here, cannot be answered. It is not my statement. I should not venture to say anything like that of anything that I said. I oppose a Report made by the Trustees of the Colored Schools in Washington, and I ask the attention of the Senate to what I read. It is a Report made to the Secretary of the Interior, December 31, 1870, and communicated to the Senate by the Secretary, January 18, 1871.[1] Under the head of “Need of Additional Legislation” the Trustees of the Colored Schools express themselves as follows:—
“It is our judgment that the best interests of the colored people of this capital, and not theirs alone, but those of all classes, require the abrogation of all laws and institutions creating or tending to perpetuate distinctions based on color, and the enactment in their stead of such provisions as shall secure equal privileges to all classes of citizens. The laws creating the present system of separate schools for colored children in this District were enacted as a temporary expedient to meet a condition of things which has now passed away.”[2]