“Civil Rights and the Public School”

“Civil Rights and the Public School”

Chronicling America

Wilmington Daily Gazette

1874-05-23

[PAGE 01]
[typed] From the Baltimore Sun. [bolded] Civil Rights and the Public Schools. ----

In the debate in the Senate on Wednesday, on the civil rights bill, Senator Thurman, Ohio, who pointed out at some length and with his usual ability, constitutional objections to the bill, said "it did not commend itself, he was satisfied, to at least one half of those who would vote for it, and the only object of its passage was to retain the the eight hundred thousand negro votes which were virtually essential to the Republican party." He predicted that the passage of the bill would result in destroying the entire common school system of the South, whereby one million colored children in that section would be deprived of education.

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There can be no doubt among observing and reflecting men that Senator Thurman is right when he says that not one-half half of those who will vote for this bill secretly app- approve it. Though he expresses this intimation mattion in temperate terms it conveys a rebuke to the advocates of this measure, the force and truth of which must be painfully felt by them, unless they are bereft of all sensibility. The significance of the statement ment is that they are willing to do great mischief for personal and political ends. They are not such imbeciles as to believe that the bill ought to pass in its present shape. While such sentimental theorists and mere men of books as Sumner might honestly indulge such an illusion it is not to be supposed for a moment that the active and practical men of affairs in the Republican can party dream of such folly. We should be the the last to accuse them of such ignorance as not to know better, and not to under- understand thoroughly the impracticability of such an enterprise, and the mischievousness ness of the attempt. There can then be no assignable motive for their course, but the venal, personal and political aims which have actuated their policy in South Carolina, line, Louisiana and other reconstructed States. The most intelligent colored men, even, of the South are grateful for the ad- advantages which they already enjoy, especially ly in regard to opportunities of education and are alive to the perils with which these last are threatened by the passage of this bill. The colored pastor of the Third Street Methodist Church, in Richmond, took a practical view of the civil rights + bill in a late address to his congregation. He said:

"The moment such an enactment appears on the statute book the public school sys- system in the South will receive a blow that will cause its death, and no power this side of heaven can infuse life into its dead car- carcass. Then who will be the losers, the blacks or the whites? * * In Virginia ' there are eighty thousand colored children attending the public schools. What will become of them?"

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This colored man's congregation appeared well satisfied with his position upon the question. If they did not endorse it, they have not thought proper to reprimand him for his opinions. Some of the colored politicians of Richmond, however, took offense at it, and a meeting was held a few days ago to announce their views in favor of the civil rights bill, of which, perhaps, they know little, though it seems to have been thought proper to make no attack on the colored pastor.

Senator Brownlow, of Tennessee, who was so unceremoniously handled by the late colored convention at Nashville, on account of his opposition to mixed schools, has published a long letter, in which he carries the war into Africa, and assails his assailants with characteristic tie rigor. In regard to mixed schools he tells the colored people that in demanding the co-education of the races they are pursuing an abstraction. He says:

"Thus the colored convention have reached out alter an abstraction; the 'civil right' to mixed schools, or as a penalty of the failure of the whites to accede their demand the 'civil right' to tear up and destroy, for an indefinite period the beneficient and common school system of Tennessee. And this, too, when they themselves proclaim that under the law, as it is, they have equal facilities with the whites for education and do not need it."

He likens this "abstraction" to that of the southern people before the war when demanding their rights in the territories. The latter lost, says he, all their real rights by pursuing this shadow-and - and so the colored people will lose the public schools by insisting that there shall be co-education.

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From all the parts of the South the indications in regard to the injurious effects which are apprehended to the public school system from the passage of the civil rights bill are the same as those which Senator Brownlow has uttered in regard to Tennessee. The public school systems in the southern States cannot survive the enactment of that law.

In Maryland we have an excellent public school system, the labor of years, supported by taxation upon our people, and which has worked well for both whites and blacks. In the event of the passage of the civil rights bill, with the feature imposing mixed schools, our Maryland system, like that in other States, may be menaced, though it may become the duty of its friends, believing the bill to be unconstitutional, to make a case and carry it the to the higher courts and decide the question of constitutionality, rather than overthrow the public schools at once, a catastrophe which none can think of with composure except those who do not care what institutions are destroyed, or what ruin is worked, so that they can keep themselves and their party in power and place.

State Convention

Nashville

TN

USA

1874-04-28

1874-04-29

Library of Congress

1874.TN-04.28.NASH