Morris and the Early Civil Rights Movement
An Advocate for 充分和平等的权利
Morris had an expansive vision of freedom that went beyond his antislavery work. Like the activists leading the U.S. civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, Morris’s activism was multifaceted. In addition to abolitionism, he worked tirelessly to desegregate schools, 民兵, 公共空间, and was a full-throated advocate of equal voting rights for women.
学校种族隔离
A little over a year after Morris’s 1847 admission to the Massachusetts Bar, he was hired by Boston printer and activist Benjamin 罗伯茨 to handle a high-profile 民权法suit. 罗伯茨 asked Morris to sue the Boston public schools on behalf of his five-year-old daughter, Sarah. 1848年2月, a Boston police officer forcibly removed Sarah from the public school that was closest to the 罗伯茨 home. Because of the color of her skin, the young child was forced to make the longer journey to the Abiel Smith School, 这是, 当时, one of two Boston public schools for Black children.
“The most important achievement on the part of our people and that which will be the most enduring, and prove most beneficial in its results to us and our children here and elsewhere was the abolition of Caste Schools in our Commonwealth. I had the honor to inaugurate that excellent and important measure, & to frame and pen the first petition sent to the School Committee here asking for Equal School rights. I had previously secured such rights to the children of color at Salem, 我的家乡, and was determined to overthrow the separate school system here”
命令启动 罗伯茨v. 波士顿市. Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Archives.
罗伯茨v. 波士顿市
Morris lobbied for school integration as early as 1843, when he filed a petition to integrate public schools in his hometown of Salem. That effort came to fruition more quickly than a parallel effort in Boston. 1848年4月, Morris sued the city of Boston, arguing that the city was unlawfully denying Sarah 罗伯茨 her right to a public education by forcing her into a segregated school. This writ (the equivalent of a modern day complaint), signed by Morris, initiated the lawsuit. His arguments focused on the fact that Sarah had to walk past five White primary schools in order to reach the Abiel Smith School and that she should be able to attend the public school closest to her home.
Notice of Intention to Appeal in 罗伯茨v. 波士顿市. Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Archives.
When the trial court rejected his claims, Morris appealed and joined forces with 查尔斯 Sumner, a White abolitionist lawyer and future U.S. 参议员. Led by Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rejected their arguments and adopted a “separate but equal” ruling echoed later by the U.S. 最高法院 普莱西诉. 弗格森 (1898). 然而, the constitutional arguments about equality before the law that Morris and Sumner made—inspired by Black activists and parents who had been working to integrate Boston’s schools for decades—resonate throughout U.S. 民权法. Indeed, their expansive understanding of equality in education can be seen in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in 布朗诉. 教育委员会，结果正好相反。 普莱西.
Chapter 256 of the Massachusetts Acts of 1855, concerning public schools.
Despite the devastating loss in 罗伯茨v. 波士顿市, Morris and other Black activists such as Benjamin 罗伯茨 and WIlliam Cooper Nell continued the fight that they had been waging for years. They persisted in bringing lawsuits and petitioning the legislature. 最后, 1855年4月, the Massachusetts legislature effectively overturned the Supreme Judicial Court’s decision in the 罗伯茨 case by enacting this law, which required the integration of Boston’s public schools and provided damages for any student excluded.
整合民兵
Federal and state law restricted service in state 民兵 to White male citizens. By the mid-nineteenth century, state 民兵 were no longer critical for national defense due to the professionalization of the U.S. 军事. 然而, exclusion from service was yet another area in which people of color in the North were not treated as equals. Morris regularly petitioned the Massachusetts legislature to integrate the state’s militia. He also fought for equal participation in 军事 service during the Civil War. Morris was gravely disappointed when the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, made up of Black soldiers, was sent to fight for the Union under the command of White officers.
“Some of the [militia] petitioners whom I have the honor to represent, can trace back their ancestry to a time long before an Englishman or any white foreigner stood upon American ground. 难道我们没有心吗?, and do not our hearts beat warm with love for the welfare and prosperity of our common country. Have we not patriotic aspirations—don’t we feel happy in the prosperity and rapid progress of our country—is not this ‘our own, 我们的祖国”?”
Petition to Integrate the Militia. 罗伯特•莫里斯 Papers, Boston Athenaeum.
Morris Petitions the Legislature
Morris wrote and circulated multiple petitions urging the Massachusetts legislature to integrate the state’s militia. This example is also signed by Morris’s brothers Joseph and 查尔斯 and several other leaders in Boston’s African American community, 包括乔治·鲁芬, the first black graduate of Harvard Law School, 和约翰五世. DeGrasse, who later was commissioned as a physician in the U.S. Army during the Civil War.
Petition to Form the Massasoit Guards. 罗伯特•莫里斯 Papers, Boston Athenaeum.
In tandem with his efforts to remove the word “white” from the state’s militia laws, Morris sought a legislative charter for an independent militia for soldiers of color called the “Massasoit Guards.” This appears to have been a pragmatic strategy, disappointing in contrast to achieving integration but at least allowing for some access and participation for people of color. 这个请愿书, in Morris’s hand and with his signature, was also signed by four of his siblings (William, 查尔斯, 乔治, and York) and other well-known Boston activists like Benjamin 罗伯茨, 约翰·斯威特·洛克, William Pindell (the plaintiff in another major school desegregation case), 和刘易斯·海登.
充分和平等的权利
Morris witnessed and endured discrimination on many different fronts and responded by fighting a multi-front war for full and equal rights. He battled segregated schools and 民兵. He endured the sting of prejudice when traveling by carriage or railroad, and protested segregated transportation, 影院, 酒店, and similar public places. He challenged housing discrimination, speaking out publicly when racist homeowners derailed his purchase of a new family home, “carrying prejudice against color to its extreme extent.” He advocated for expansive voting rights. His political activism used different strategies to pursue this broad agenda of equality, 他与 不同的盟友 朝着共同的目标前进.
“[Morris] struck terrible blows at the exclusive school system for Negroes in Boston. He availed himself also of every opportunity that offered to annoy the railroad companies. He would go in person to theatres, 讲座的房间, 教堂, 和其他公共场所, buy his ticket and force the employes [sic] to eject him, then he would carry the matter into the courts. 这样，先生. Morris succeeded in breaking up a barbarous custom of exclusion on account of color.”
从 解放者, "The Constitutional Convention and Equal Political Rights," March 4. 1853.
妇女权利平等
Morris signed onto this 1853 petition to strike the word “male” from the Massachusetts Constitution. The multiracial group of petitioners, 包括莫里斯, 露西的石头, and William Lloyd Garrison, pushed for constitutional recognition of civil and political rights for women. This was a mere five years after the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York. The all-male delegation at the 1853 Massachusetts Constitutional Convention refused to act upon the petition, but activists persisted for decades until the final ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920.