Plessy v. Ferguson · ¶14

One of the earliest of these cases is that of Roberts v. City of Boston, 5 Cush. 198, in which the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts held that the general school committee of Boston had power to make provision for the instruction of colored children in separate schools established exclusively for them, and to prohibit their attendance upon the other schools. “The great principle,” said Chief Justice Shaw, p. 206, “advanced by the learned and eloquent advocate for the plaintiff,” (Mr. Charles Sumner,) “is, that by the constitution and laws of Massachusetts, all persons without distinction of age or sex, birth or color, origin or condition, are equal before the law.... But, when this great principle comes to be applied to the actual and various conditions of persons in society, it will not warrant the assertion, that men and women are legally clothed with the same civil and…

U. S. Reports, bound volume
U. S. Reports, volume 163, at 537 (Library of Congress) · transcription: Caselaw Access Project
Passage preview. Read in context for the complete text, notes and references.