“Let all discrimination on account of color be avoided in the
public schools of Washington, let them be amply provided for in
respect to funds and teachers, and a very few years will see
the example followed all over our free country. The colored
race will feel the stimulating effects of direct competition
with the white race, their ambition and self-respect will grow
under its influence and add dignity to their character, and
rapidly develop a style and type of manhood that must place
them on an equality with any of the other races of men.
“We have seen this prejudice die out on the field of battle,
where white and colored have fought together for the same flag.
It has been met and conquered at the ballot-box and in the
halls of our local and general Legislatures, and why should
it not receive the same fate in our school-rooms? Why educate
American youth in the idea that superiority exists in the color
of the skin, when our Declaration of Independence, of which we
boast so much, flatly contradicts it?”[10]
Now, Sir, I might well leave this whole question on this remarkable
statement by these colored Trustees. They have spoken for themselves,
for their race, and for us. Who can speak better? I know not if
anything can be added to their Reports. I content myself with one
further word, concluding as I began.
The Senator from New Hampshire finds the principle correct, but not
practical. To that I say, Try it. Try the principle, and it will be
found practical. It will work. Never was there any correct principle
that would not work. I know it is sometimes said that white parents
would not send their children to the schools. How long would that be?
One week, two weeks, one month, two months. Some might do so possibly
for a brief time, just as for a brief time white persons refused to
enter the street cars when they were opened to colored persons. It did
not last long. According to my experience, men are not in the habit of
biting off their own noses for any very long time. Life is too short
to prolong this process; and I do not believe that the people of the
District of Columbia would reject for their children the advantages
of the common schools simply because these schools were brought into
harmony with the promises of the Declaration of Independence.