EQUAL RIGHTS IN THE LECTURE-ROOM.
Letter to the Committee of the New Bedford
Lyceum, November 29, 1845.
After accepting an invitation to lecture
before the Lyceum at New Bedford, Mr. Sumner, learning that colored persons
were denied membership and equal opportunities with white persons, refused to
lecture, as appears in the following Letter, which was published in the papers
of the time.
Shortly afterwards the obnoxious rule was
rescinded, and Mr. Sumner lectured.
Boston, November 29, 1845.
My Dear Sir,—I have received your favor of
November 24, asking me to appoint an evening in February or March to lecture
before the New Bedford Lyceum, in pursuance of my promise.
On receiving the invitation of your Lyceum,
I felt flattered, and, in undertaking to deliver a lecture at some time, to be
appointed afterwards, I promised myself peculiar pleasure in an occasion of
visiting a town which I had never seen, but whose refined hospitality and
liberal spirit, as described to me, awakened my warmest interest.
Since then I have read in the public prints
a protest, purporting to be by gentlemen well known to me by reputation, who
are members of the Lyceum, and some of them part of its government, from which
it appears that in former years tickets of admission were freely sold to
colored persons, as to white persons, and that no objection was made to them as
members, but that at the present time tickets are refused to colored persons,
and membership is also refused practically, though, by special vote recently
adopted, they are allowed to attend the lectures without expense, provided they
will sit in the north gallery.
From these facts it appears that the New
Bedford Lyceum has undertaken within its jurisdiction to establish a
distinction of Caste not recognized before.
One of the cardinal truths of religion and
freedom is the Equality and Brotherhood of Man. In the sight of God and of all
just institutions the white man can claim no precedence or exclusive privilege
from his color. It is the accident of an accident that places a human soul
beneath the dark shelter of an African countenance, rather than beneath our colder
complexion. Nor can I conceive any application of the divine injunction, Do
unto others as you would have them do unto you, more pertinent than to the man
who founds a discrimination between his fellow-men on difference of skin.
It is well known that the prejudice of
color, which is akin to the stern and selfish spirit that holds a fellow-man in
slavery, is peculiar to our country. It does not exist in other civilized
countries. In France colored youths at college have gained the highest honors,
and been welcomed as if they were white. At the Law School there I have sat
with them on the same benches. In Italy I have seen an Abyssinian mingling with
monks, and there was no apparent suspicion on either side of anything open to
question. All this was Christian: so it seemed to me.
In lecturing before a Lyceum which has
introduced the prejudice of color among its laws, and thus formally reversed an
injunction of highest morals and politics, I might seem to sanction what is
most alien to my soul, and join in disobedience to that command which teaches
that the children of earth are all of one blood. I cannot do this.
I beg, therefore, to be excused at present
from appointing a day to lecture before your Lyceum; and I pray you to lay this
letter before the Lyceum, that the ground may be understood on which I deem it
my duty to decline the honor of appearing before them.
I hope you will pardon the frankness of
this communication, and believe me, my dear Sir,
Very faithfully yours,
CHARLES SUMNER.
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