From the Boston Standard:
"A year ago the unconstitutional and vile Sheats law was passed by the legislature of Florida. It was understood that this law was particularly aimed at the Orange Park School, of the American Missionary Association, whose fiftieth anniversary is to be celebrated in this city next fall. This villainous statute was enforced in the case of the Orange Park School on the entire body of teachers, white men and women of spotless character and self-sacrificing devotion to the mission, because of educating teachers for the elevation of American citizenship. The normal school is one of the best and most useful of the educational agencies at work in the South, but had dared to ignore the outrageous statute which makes it a crime for any school, public or private, to teach black and white scholars in the same building or have any white teachers to eat and sleep in the same house[pg 181] with their Negro pupils. If these discretionary rights are not guaranteed by our national Constitution to American citizens, then the professed abolition of slavery and of the color line in citizenship is a wretched farce. Nobody can question the intent of the proclamation of emancipation of the constitutional amendment that places the Negro on the same legal plane with the white citizen of this country. We do not doubt the supreme and binding authority of this legislature. We mistake the temper of the American people if a blaze of indignation is not kindled by this outrage from the Atlantic to the Pacific."
From Frank Leslie's Weekly:
"Under these provisions no citizen of Florida, it will be noted, can under certain conditions educate his child. He is excluded absolutely from the best educational institutions in the State if these admit pupils of both white and colored parentage. The defiance of the law was in obedience to a definite determination on the part of the American Missionary Association to make a distinct test of the statute."
From the Boston Daily Advertiser:
"The Sheats law in Florida was passed through the influence of malice, prejudice, and partisan venom. Efforts have been made in other Southern States to perpetrate similar outrages, but for the most part without avail. The better public sentiment all over the South is strongly against such meanness. This better sentiment has asserted itself successfully elsewhere, and we do not doubt that it will do so very soon in Florida."
From the Boston Journal:
"The American Missionary Association will be sustained by an enlightened public sentiment in fighting to the last resort the outrageous Florida law which makes it a crime to teach colored and white pupils in the same school."
These comments are but samples of the sentiment which comes to the Association respecting this attempt to challenge the constitutional amendment which came with the emancipation of the colored people from slavery. But now there is