Schools Are a Common Platform of Nationality: An Address Delivered in Washington, D.C., on May 9, 1872
SCHOOLS ARE A COMMON PLATFORM OF NATIONALITY:
AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN WASHINGTON, D.C.,
ON 9 MAY 1872
New National Era, 16 May 1872. Other texts in Washington Daily Morning Chronicle, 10
May 1872; Washington National Republican, 10 May 1872; Washington Evening Star, 10
May 1872.
On the evening of 9 May 1872 a “large assemblage,” composed mostly of
black citizens but “with a sprinkling of whites,” gathered at the Congrega-
tional Church in Washington, D.C., to hear Douglass, John Mercer Langston,
George T. Downing, and Senator Henry Wilson, among others, speak on
what the New National Era described as “the advisability of admitting to the
public schools children without regard to color.” William J. Wilson called the
meeting to order and announced the officers, who included Douglass as
president. After a prayer by the Reverend William J. Walker, Douglass rose
and urged “equality in our common schools.” Senator Wilson then offered his
support to the cause of civil rights, and a number of letters of support were
read, including ones from President Ulysses S. Grant and Senator Charles
Sumner. Douglass then introduced the other speakers. The meeting passed
three resolutions concerning the Republican party’s role in the struggle for
civil rights and lauding the efforts of Charles Sumner, who had introduced a
civil rights bill in Congress only a few days before. The meeting concluded
with speeches by C. H. Harris and Daniel Augustus Straker.
We are assembled here to-night for a patriotic as well as a beneficent
object. It is patriotic, because if obtained it will take from the politics of our
country an element which has ever lashed them into fury. We intend to
strike at the root of the evil by doing away with all discriminations against
any class of American citizens on account of race, color, or previous
condition. No one can fail to observe that our nation is made of different
nationalities, which are bound to increase. No one variety can discriminate
against another without weakening the body politic and destroying the love
of country. The object of this meeting is to bring about this great change in
our public opinion by a firm, earnest, patriotic expression of our views.
The great objection to the object of this meeting is what is called preju-
dice—prejudice against color. It is urged that the white man naturally feels
a repugnance against the black man, and with some amelioration it is urged
that it is reciprocated by the black man. I don’t believe in this kind of
prejudice. I see in it simply an effort on the part of those who make the
discrimination to keep the colored man in a servile condition. The objection
is to the colored man being a gentleman and his wife a lady. No one
objects to have a colored man ride in their carriage provided he is there as a
servant. I see it every day on Pennsylvania avenue.1Washington’s Pennsylvania Avenue, which runs from the U.S. Capitol past the White House, was a scenic, poplar-lined thoroughfare in the 1870s. In 1871 the government completed a new wooden paving of the avenue. William Tindall, Standard History of the City of Washington (Knoxville, Tenn., 1914), 319; Whyte, Uncivil War, 104-05.
There is no objection to his color, but he must be kept in his place. All
this is a relic of barbarism. The prejudice exists nowhere but in the United
States. The people of Europe know nothing of it. There is no country under
the sky where this prejudice exists except in the United States. But it is not
invincible. The whole history of our country shows us that. It has been
overcome thousands of times, and can be again. We are here to-night to
urge equality in our common schools, because there of all other places is
the place to start right. The common school is the basis of our whole
system, and without it the United States would be little better than unedu-
cated Hayti. We are met with an objection at once. It is urged that our
zealous white friends are endeavoring to enforce social equality in the
country. We do not aim at any such thing. The colored people desire
nothing so intangible. It is unknown to the laws of this country or any other
country. I understand what is meant by equality before the law, but social
equality I am entirely ignorant of. I know there are little rings and coteries,
where men are equal, but there is no such thing as social equality on a
national scale. What is social equality? Is it to walk the streets with others,
to ride in the cars, to drink at the same fountain? If these constitute social
equality then I am in for it. I don’t think that even the editor of the Patriot,2When published in Washington from November 1870 to November 1872, the Daily Patriot was the capital's only Democratic newspaper. During its brief existence the Daily Patriot had several editors, including Noah L. Jeffries (1828-?) who held the position at the time of Douglass's remarks. Born in Pennsylvania, Jeffries moved to Mansfield, Ohio, where he practiced law. He entered the U.S. Army at the start of the Civil War and served as assistant provost marshal general in 1864 and 1865. Andrew Johnson appointed Jeffries registrar of the Treasury Department in September 1867 and retained him there until the end of his administration. Frederick Hudson, Journalism in the United States, from 1690-1872 (1873; New York, 1969), 260-61; U.S. Department of War, Adjutant General's Office, Official Army Register of the Volunteer Force of the United States Army for the Years 1861, '62, ’63, '64, '65, 8 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1865-67), 2: 512, 8: 62; [Charles Lanman, ed.], Biographical Annals of the Civil Government of the United States, During Its First Century; from Original and Official Sources (Washington, D.C. 1876), 226.
if he drank at the same pump with Fred. Douglass, would consider him his
social equal, and I don’t know what Fred. Douglass would think on the
other side. (Laughter.) But if it be understood that we are endeavoring to
force our white neighbors to invite us to their drawing-rooms, to allow us to
marry their sons and daughters—if this is social equality then I contend
that it is wrong to confound the common school subject with this idea.
There was no distinction between color when I was a boy playing with my
fellows. It was only when the black man asserted himself a man, and
endeavored to be a man among men, that the line was drawn. I desire, and
the gentlemen on this platform desire, that the colored child have the same
common school right that any other child has, and I say until this is done
there will be no such thing in this country as a common school system. It is
easy enough to see how logical it was to keep the colored man ignorant
during the time of slavery, but we have a new basis from which to argue. We
want a common platform of nationality. I see no reason why a colored child
should be kept from the common school simply on account of his color.
There will be no difficulty in carrying the project out. It has already been
accomplished in New England and in New York.3Although the New York state superintendent of schools acknowledged in 1824 that there was no legal prohibition against black pupils attending public schools, he did not clearly say they possessed the right to attend, and, indeed, few blacks did go to public schools. In 1841 a state law declared that public schools were open to “all” children of school age, and the state superintendent repeated that view in his decision on a case originating in Rochester. In 1847 his published interpretation of the law stated: “Colored children are entitled equally with all others to the privileges and advantages of the district schools." This formed the basis of education policy into the twentieth century. Local school districts did not always follow this directive, however, and some segregated facilities existed until the end of the century. Upon moving his family to Rochester in 1848, Douglass himself encountered segregation in both public and private schools when he enrolled his daughter Rosetta as a pupil. Carleton Mabee, Black Education in New York State: From Colonial to Modern Times (Syracuse, I979), 70-71; Quarles, FD, 108; Rhoda Golden Freeman, “The Free Negro in New York City in the Era before the Civil War" (Ph.D diss., Columbia Univ., 1966), 347. It was not done without a
struggle, but it was done eventually, and we want to do it here.