Before Integration: The Forgotten Years of Jim Crow Education in Boston

In 1846, subcommittee of Primary School Committee and three years later special committee of Grammar School Board -the two agencies with plenary oversight of public education Boston-issued two long reports response to petitions from black parents opposed to exclusive schools. In first, Negro parents charged the establishment of exclusive denied them equal privileges; deprived them of harmonizing, socializing influence... of integrated education; and was an unnecessary municipal expense, unlawful, and. . . if not intention, fact, insulting. Exclusive schools, Charles Sumner told state's highest court 1849, were unequal, practical inconvenience, a violation of equality and in nature of Caste.' In reply to these charges, both reports repeatedly emphasized what their authors obviously believed was significant point of rebuttal, and one too frequently overlooked, namely, that these Schools were established at urgent and repeated requests of colored people themselves.' ' We did not originate system, one report protested, the system has grown up without help of law . . . , and the only reference to separate schools for colored children, on municipal Records of Boston, is mention of fact colored people themselves petitioned for them, and, on