SCHOOLS BROKEN UP in Lawrence County, Ohio
EFFECT OF MIXED SCHOOLS! THE REPUBLICAN PARTY LEADERS ARE RESPONSIBLE
Portsmouth Daily Times, Portsmouth, Ohio, 10 Oct 1874, Sat • Page 2
We invite the reader’s attention to some of the practical results of attempting to establish mixed schools in this State. Some-few days ago, Mr. BUNDY made a speech in Proctorsville, [sic] in which he told the white and colored people there that the passage of the Civil Rights Bill would result in no way affect the present workings of the public schools of the State of Ohio, and informed his hearers that the blacks could demand admittance now under the laws of the State.
We have since been informed by reliable gentlemen of Lawrence county that, when the schools opened there, the colored people sent their children to the school, which was immediately broken up.
This occurred in a locality that is overwhelmingly Republican and is evidence the most practical and convincing that the people are not willing to admit an amalgamation of the schools, much less to be compelled by fines and penalties to accept them.
LATER.
Since writing the foregoing statement, of the suspension of the public schools in Proctorsville, [sic] Lawrence county, we have received the Ironton Commercial, which confirms our report, only it shows that the imbroglio was even more complicated than we had at first supposed. From that paper of Friday last, Ave finds the following correspondence of the paper.
“The people of Quaker Bottom have gotten quite excited over their school. When the school opened, the darkies began going with the whites, raising a fuss. The old directors resigned, and Mr. R.W. MAGEE had the school stopped at his expense. The directors had made provisions for a colored school, and the negroes refused to attend it; they said they would go with the whites. I fear there will be serious trouble over the matter.”
The Commercial confirms the fact by the following editorial mention :
” We learn that the objection to the attendance of colored children in the school at Proctorsville has been so great on the part of some members of the Board of Education that the school has been temporarily closed for a survey of the situation.”
And here, we can see the odious effects of the Civil Rights Bill if it were a law. Under it, those trustees who resigned could be arrested b U.S. Marshals, taken to Cincinnati, tried in the U.S. Courts, found guilty of violating it, and imprisoned for a year in a bastille and fined one thousand dollars. Is there a man who cannot see how fatal it would be to the rights of the citizen?
There were three school trustees “who had made provisions for a colored school.” This did not suit the colored men whom Mr. BUNDY had inoculated with his baneful and pernicious views. They refused to attend a separate school. Mr. BUNDY had told them they had a right to go to the white schools, and Mr. BUNDY was an oracle, and from his judgment, they would not appeal.
They persisted in taking Mr. BUNDY’S advice, and while other localities have their schools in full operation, and the rising generation is being prepared for the future, the school is suspended there, and neither white nor colored are being educated.
Voters of the 11th district, do you hesitate any longer? Do you want the trouble brought nearer your own doors before you are convinced that any man seeking to force the like upon you should be elected?
Are you prepared to surrender at the knock of the U.S. Marshal?
Are you prepared to be taken from your homes at the hour of midnight and hurried off to Cincinnati and tried because you are unwilling to see two distinct races of men forced into terms of closer social relations by co-education when it is distasteful to both?
You cannot be tried in your own Courts, in your own county, but taken where the expense of litigation is trebled, where your friends cannot be with you. That would have been done with the three school trustees and with Mr. MAGEE if Mr. BUNDY’S Civil Rights Bill was a law, as he tried to make it.
It would help if you voted against Mr. BUNDY. This will tell him in unmistakable language that you expect him to oppose the bill with his vote next winter or get out of the way and let someone take his place in Congress who will represent the people on the subject.
If you want an exemption from arbitrary arrest, you will vote against Mr. BUNDY.
[Note from Martha-this story goes on to encourage votes to vote against Mr. Bundy]
0 Comments