intermingling in the public schools disadvantageous both to them and to the whites."[2] Questioned as to any positive law providing for such discrimination, Chandler gave his opinion that the School Committee of Boston, under the authority perhaps of the City Council, had a legal right to establish and maintain special primary schools for the blacks.  He believed, too, that in the exercise of their lawful discretionary power they could exclude white pupils from certain schools and colored pupils from certain other schools when, in their judgment, the best interests of all would thereby be promoted.[3]

[Footnote 1:  Wigham, The Antislavery Cause in America, p. 103.]

[Footnote 2:  Minority Report, etc., p. 31.]

[Footnote 3:  Ibid., p. 30.]

Encouraged by the fact that colored children were indiscriminately admitted to the schools of Salem, Nantucket, New Bedford, and Lowell, in fact, of every city in Massachusetts but Boston, the friends of the colored people fearlessly attacked the false legal theories of Solicitor Chandler.  The minority of the School Committee argued that schools are the common property of all, and that each and all are legally entitled without “let or hindrance” to the equal benefits of all advantages they might confer.[1] Any action, therefore, which tended to restrict to any individual or class the advantages and benefits designed for all, was an illegal use of authority, and an arbitrary act used for pernicious purposes.[2] Their republican system, the minority believed, conferred civil equality and legal rights upon every citizen, knew neither privileged nor degraded classes, made no distinctions, and created no differences between rich and poor, learned and ignorant, or white and black, but extended to all alike its protection and benefits.[3] The minority considered it a merit of the school system that it produced the fusion of all classes, promoted the feeling of brotherhood, and the habits of equality.  The power of the School Committee, therefore, was limited and constrained by the general spirit of the civil policy and by the letter and spirit of the laws which regulated the system.[4] It was further maintained that to debar the colored youth from these advantages, even if they were assured the same external results, would be a sore injustice and would serve as the surest means of perpetuating a prejudice which should be deprecated and discountenanced by all intelligent and Christian men.[5]

[Footnote 1:  Ibid., p. 3.]

[Footnote 2:  Minority Report, etc. pp. 4 and 5.]

[Footnote 3:  Ibid., pp. 3 et. seq.]

[Footnote 4:  Ibid., p. 4.]

[Footnote 5:  Ibid., p. 5.]