The Great Abolitionist: Charles Sumner and the Fight for a More Perfect Union

by Stephen Puleo

Sumner predicted that within ten years, the legal profession and society at large would repudiate Shaw and agree instead with his argument on the unconstitutionality and moral shortfalls of “separate but equal” schools. He would be proven right in Boston at least. In 1855, pressured by black and white abolitionists furious over a draconian national Fugitive Slave Law and inspired by a speaking tour and petition drive by Sarah’s father, Benjamin Roberts, the Massachusetts legislature passed a law decreeing that throughout the common schools of the state, “no distinction shall be made on account of the race, color, or religious opinions of the applicant or scholar.”