Mar 21, 2013 - Sale 2308

Sale 2308 - Lot 308

Price Realized: $ 1,560
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
A STEPPING STONE TO PLESSY V FERGUSON (EDUCATION.) SUMNER, CHARLES. The Argument of Charles Sumner, Esq. Against the Constitutionality of Separate Colored Schools in the Case of Sarah C. Roberts vs The City of Boston. Before the Supreme Court of Mass. Dec. 4, 1849. 32 pages. 8vo, original printed salmon wrappers; small chip to top right corner of the front cover; short, closed tear to the corner of the Boston: Roberts, 1849
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a stepping stone case in the long history of school desegregation. Roberts vs. Boston (1848-1849) concerned a five year old African-American girl, Sarah Roberts who was enrolled in the all black Smith Street School. The school was quite some distance from the girl's home in Boston; and generally the common schools that African-Americans had available to them were dilapidated and under funded. As a result, her father, Benjamin F. Roberts (who printed this pamphlet), attempted to apply her to several nearer, white schools. She was of course denied on the basis of race and was actually physically removed from one of the schools. Roberts proceeded to write to the state legislature, and the case went all the way up to the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, where Roberts listed his daughter Sarah as the plaintiff against the defendant, Boston. The defendant's attorney was Peleg Chandler and the plaintiff's attorneys were Charles Sumner and Robert Morris, the country's first licensed African-American attorney; the judge was Lemuel Shaw. Sumner and Morris argued the trauma the four-year-old would experience having to walk such a long distance to a run down school, but despite their best efforts Shaw ruled against the plaintiff. However, Roberts brought the same issue up to the state legislature with the help of his lawyer Charles Sumner and in 1855, the state of Massachusetts banned segregated schools in the entire state. This was the first law against segregated schools in the country. Cited in Plessy v Ferguson and again almost 100 years later in Brown v Board of Ed.