These victories having been won in other towns of the State by 1846, it soon became evident that Boston would have to yield. Not only were abolitionists pointing to the ease with which this gain had been made in other towns, but were directing attention to the fact that in these smaller communities Negroes were both learning the fundamentals and advancing through the lower grades into the high school. Boston, which had a larger black population than all other towns in Massachusetts combined, had never seen a colored pupil prepared for a secondary institution in one of its public schools. It was, therefore, evident to fair-minded persons that in cities of separate systems Negroes would derive practically no benefit from the school tax which they paid.
This agitation for the abolition of caste in the public schools assumed its most violent form in Boston during the forties. The abolitionists then organized a more strenuous opposition to the caste system. Why Sarah Redmond and the other children of a family paying tax to support the schools of Boston should be turned away from a public school simply because they were persons of color was a problem too difficult for a fair-minded man.[1] The war of words came, however, when in response to a petition of Edmund Jackson, H.J. Bowditch, and other citizens for the admission of colored people to the public schools in 1844, the majority of the school committee refused the request. Following the opinion of Chandler, their solicitor, they based their action of making distinction in the public schools on the natural distinction of the races, which "no legislature, no social customs, can efface," and which "renders a promiscuous 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]
