4033 Let Us Be Bold

Speakers: The Rev. Stephen Kendrick and his son, Paul Kendrick, co-authors of Sarah's Long Walk, Beacon Press, 2005.

Sponsor: Promise the Children , Promise Massachusetts Children

Prepared for UUA.org by: Jone Johnson Lewis, Reporter; Margy Levine Young, Editor

The Rev. Stephen Kendrick and his son Patrick began with a story of how, after the UUA General Assembly was held in Nashville , Tennessee in June 2000, they went to Memphis – for different motivations, to see the base of favorite musicians. They both wanted, though, to go to the National Civil Rights Museum. There, on a legal timeline, they saw the first entry, for Roberts v. City of Boston, a school desegregation case they'd never heard of. The Rev. Kendrick was called, soon after, to First Church Boston.

Who was Sarah Roberts of Roberts v. City of Boston? Why was her father, Benjamin Roberts, so determined to bring the case? The story they pieced together, the Kendricks said, was not so much one of a legal case, but a story of family and community.

Sarah Roberts, age four, in the 1840s in Boston , was denied admission to the nearest school when her father's attempt to get her admitted to a nearby school was turned down at three different levels. Instead, she was expected to take a very long walk, past five white schools, to the school for black children. Her father did manage to get her admitted to another white school – and, when the school committee discovered the "error," the committee had Sarah removed – by a police officer.

Sarah and her family lived in a black community on the back side of Beacon Hill, one of the largest communities of free blacks in America. "An amazing group of people," the Rev. Kendrick described them: "a community of activists."

The Kendricks described how they had learned that history needs to be written from the underside. In learning about unsung heroes, those to whom statues haven't been dedicated and who have often been forgotten, they also learned a new definition of greatness. They learned, as well, about the power of community, the power of coalition, the power of persistence, and the power of boldness.

Going back to the story of the Roberts case, Paul Kendrick described Robert Morse as the real hero of this story. The grandson of a slave and son of a house servant, he was himself a servant when noticed by an abolitionist lawyer. Eventually, this abolitionist offered to train him in the law. At age twenty-three, Morse won his first case, becoming thereby the first black lawyer in America to win a case before a jury.

A year after that case, Benjamin Roberts, father of Sarah, found Morse, and Morse agreed to take Sarah's case.

The black community of Boston had already fought laws against interracial marriage and had taken on transportation segregation with economic boycotts. Now was time to take on segregation in the Boston schools, and the policy of sending all the black children to a separate school.

In Morse's case, he didn't argue for fairness and desegregation in general: he argued that Sarah shouldn't have to walk past five white schools to get to school. But Morse lost the case. He then looked to find another lawyer to work with him, and found Charles Sumner, who took the case without pay.

Turned down first by the school committee then the court of appeals, Morse and Sumner (a Unitarian) took the case before Judge Lemuel Shaw (also a Unitarian). They argued the case on the basis of the Massachusetts Constitution's guarantee of equality before the law, and argued that not only did segregation harm and stigmatize the black children, it also harmed the whole system of public schools and injured whites themselves.

They lost this case, too. Judge Shaw articulated the principle of "separate but equal" which later would be used in Plessy v. Ferguson to justify and legitimate segregation in schools, and in other public facilities. But though the court found against them, the black community took action. They began a boycott and kept it going for fifteen years in total.

They eventually found unlikely legislative allies in the Know-Nothings, a political party that fought against rights for immigrants, and in 1855, were able to get legislation passed that ended school segregation in Boston. That desegregation was, unlike in the 1970s, done peacefully.

The Rev. Kendrick reminded the audience that "This is not over. This is not done." Racial separation still exists, and still harms us. "They hoped. We can do better. We have no right to do any less."

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