of the memorialists to decide whether they desired to send their children to the white or separate schools.[1] They decided in favor of the latter, provided that the colored people should have a building adequate to their needs and instruction of the best kind.[2] Complying with this decision the School Society erected the much-needed building in 1852.  To provide for the maintenance of the separate schools the property of the citizens was taxed at such a rate as to secure to the colored pupils of the city benefits similar to those enjoyed by the white pupils.[3]

[Footnote 1:  Minority Report, etc., p. 21.]

[Footnote 2:  Ibid., p. 22.]

[Footnote 3:  Special Report of the U.S.  Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 334.]

Ardent antislavery men believed that this segregation in the schools was undemocratic.  They asserted that the colored people would never have made such a request had the teachers of the public schools taken the proper interest in them.  The Negroes, too, had long since been convinced that the white people would not maintain separate schools with the same equipment which they gave their own.  This arrangement, however, continued until 1868.  The legislature then passed an act declaring that the schools of the State should be open to all persons alike between the ages of four and sixteen, and that no person should be denied instruction in any public school in his school district on account of race or color.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Public Acts of the General Assembly of Conn., 1868, p. 296.]

In the State of Massachusetts the contest was most ardent.  Boston opened its first primary school for colored children in 1820.  In other towns like Salem and Nantucket, New Bedford and Lowell, where the colored population was also considerable, the same policy was carried out.[1] Some years later, however, both the Negroes and their friends saw the error of their early advocacy of the establishment of special schools to escape the stigma of receiving charity.  After the change in the attitude toward the public free schools and the further development of caste in American education, there arose in Massachusetts a struggle between leaders determined to restrict the Negroes’ privileges to the use of poorly equipped separate schools and those contending for equality in education.

[Footnote 1:  Minority Report, etc., p. 35.]

Basing their action on the equality of men before the law, the advocates of democratic education held meetings from which went frequent and urgent petitions to school committees until Negroes were accepted in the public schools in all towns in Massachusetts except Boston.[1] Children of African blood were successfully admitted to the New Bedford schools on equality with the white youth in 1838.[2] In 1846 the school committee of that town reported that the colored pupils were regular in their attendance, and as successful in their work as the whites.  There were then ninety in all in that system; four in the high school, forty in grammar schools, and the remainder in the primary department, all being scattered in such a way as to have one to four in twenty-one to twenty-eight schools.  At Lowell the children of a colored family were not only among the best in the schools but the greatest favorites in the system.[3]