This enactment against the personal rights of education in a private Christian school not supported or aided by the State, if sustained, would destroy nearly all of the institutions carried on by Northern benevolence in all of our Southern States. It would take the guardianship of manners and morals out of the hands of those who have planted and sustained the institutions until now, and who, in view of the millions yet uneducated and untrained, are now needed as much as ever. It is not surprising, therefore, that the National Council of Congregational Churches at Syracuse in October requested the Association to take this question to the highest courts, nor that the General Conference of the Methodist Church in Cleveland has just passed a resolution denouncing this iniquitous enactment, or that we are receiving constantly from our State and local associations assurances of sympathy and support in our contest against this reversion to barbarism. We quote a few of the opinions which have come under our observation.
From the Congregationalist:
"The ethics of Christ, Pilgrim traditions, and the U. S. Constitution seemed paramount to the opinions of Florida legislators, and the highest officials of the[pg 180] American Missionary Association decided to defy and test the law. That the denomination stands back of them may be reasonably inferred from the resolution passed by the last Triennial National Council. Let the American Missionary Association have the sinews of war with which to employ the ablest counsel."
From the Outlook:
"The State of Florida not long ago took action which is a disgrace to itself and a blot on the fair fame of our republic. Let our people squarely face this issue. While we are protesting against the treatment of missionaries in Turkey and calling upon the Government to use all its power in their protection, Christian teachers widely known and honored in one of the great States of this republic are arrested simply because they presumed to instruct a few white children under the same roof with colored children. It is hard to speak of such conduct in mild words. The question as to whether this is in reality a free republic is once more at issue. The action of the State of Florida is as barbaric as the persecutions of the Middle Ages."
From the Independent:
"Let the reader observe that this is not a law applying merely to the public schools of the State. Such a law we condemn, but we could not be surprised at it. This law is directed at this particular institution, which is not a public school but a private academy supported by the American Missionary Association. We have been amazed that in this nineteenth century Christians could be massacred by the thousands for not accepting the Moslem faith and no hand raised to defend them. But that was in Turkey. Here in the United States more than thirty years after the Proclamation of Emancipation in one of the sovereign States of the Union, half a dozen men and women are arrested for the crime of treating black children and white children alike, for not drawing a caste line in their own private grounds in a school they conduct at no expense to the State. It is a curious humiliating occurrence for this Jubilee year of the American Missionary Association."
From the Advance:
"Florida's disgraceful Sheats law, specially designed for the teachers and supporters of Orange Park Academy, has at last been put in force. The teachers of the Academy, the pastor of the church, and the parents of the white pupils have been arrested for violation of this law, which forbids any one to maintain or patronize a school in which white persons and Negroes shall be taught or boarded within the same building.
And this is the State of Senator Call, who is declaiming so eloquently in behalf of the Cuban insurgents, more than half of whom are of Negro blood."