Robert Morris (lawyer)
Robert Morris (June 8, 1823 – December 12, 1882) was one of the first African-American attorneys in the United States,[1] and was called "the first really successful colored lawyer in America."[2]
Attorney
Admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1847, Morris may have been the first black man to file a lawsuit in the U.S. (He prevailed.)[3]
He opened the first black law office in the United States with partner Macon Bolling Allen (incidentally, the first black American lawyer).[4]
Abolitionist
Roberts v. Boston
He was active in black and abolitionist causes, notably filing and trying the first U.S. civil rights challenge to segregated public schools in the 1848 case of Roberts v. Boston. The case, pressed by Morris and Charles Sumner, is believed to be the first legal challenge of the "separate but equal" practice in America. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled against Morris in 1850, a decision cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in support of its Plessy v. Ferguson ruling in 1896, which codified the "separate but equal" standard. "Separate but equal" was ultimately overturned by the high court in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.
Fugitive Slave Act
Anthony Burns
Anthony Burns was a fugitive slave who was captured and tried under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 in Boston. Richard Henry Dana, Jr. and Morris acted as Burns' attorneys, but were unsuccessful. With the ruling made against Burns, the government effectively held Boston under martial law for the afternoon. The case generated national publicity, large demonstrations, protests and an attack on US Marshals at the courthouse. Federal troops were used to ensure Burns was transported to a ship for return to Virginia after the trial. He was eventually ransomed from slavery, with his freedom purchased by Boston sympathizers. Afterward he was educated at Oberlin College and became a Baptist preacher, moving to Upper Canada for a position.[citation needed]
Shadrach Minkins
Shadrach Minkins was fugitive slave from Norfolk, Virginia, Minkins who escaped in 1850 to Boston, Massachusetts and worked as a waiter. He was captured and held under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Upon his arrest at the restaurant he worked at, Minkins was taken to a hearing at the Boston courthouse. Robert Morris worked with attorneys Samuel E. Sewall, Ellis Gray Loring, and Richard Henry Dana, Jr., to defend Minkins. Seeking to have Minkins released from custody, they filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus with the Supreme Judicial Court, which was refused by Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw.[5]
Morris collaborated with Edward G. Walker and Lewis Hayden collaborated to obtain Shadrach's release.[6] He was rescued by white and black members of the anti-slavery Boston Vigilance Committee.[5][7][8] After having been hidden in an attic in Beacon Hill, Minkins escaped and fled to Canada. Nine abolitionists were indicted, charges were dismissed for some of the individuals. Morris and Lewis Hayden, who had stormed the courtroom to get Minkins, were tried and acquitted.[5]
School integration
Boston's African American community has worked for educational opportunities since 1787 when Prince Hall petitioned for equal access to public schools to the legislature of Massachusetts. His and other people's attempts to have asscess to schools were also denied. The Beacon Hill home of Hall's son, Primus Hall, was used as a school starting in 1798. Ten years later the school was moved to the African Meeting House. In the 1820s the city government provided 2 primary schools for black children.[9]
School conditions and teacher quality was not maintained by the Boston School Committee, and children of color were excluded from Boston's high school and Latin school. The efforts to create a separate but equal school system in Boston failed.[10]
Morris, Thomas Dalton, and William Cooper Nell argued the importance of integration: "It is very hard to retain self-respect if we see ourselves set apart and avoided as a degraded race by others.. Do not say to our children that however well-behaved their very presence is in a public school, is contamination to your children." Lastly, they said that black schools do not provide the same level of education as the multiple forms of white schools, including "primary, grammar, Latin and high schools."[11]
Judicial post
Morris was commissioned as a magistrate of Essex County, Massachusetts by the governor, making him the second black lawyer to hold a judicial post. He ran for mayor of Chelsea, Massachusetts in 1866.
References
- ^ "Morris, Robert, Sr. (1823–1882) | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed". The Black Past. Retrieved 2013-04-25.
- ^ J. Clay Smith, Jr., Thurgood Marshall (1999). Emancipation: The Making of the Black Lawyer, 1844-1944. University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 407. ISBN 978-0-8122-1685-1.
- ^ J. Clay Smith, Jr., Thurgood Marshall (1999). Emancipation: The Making of the Black Lawyer, 1844-1944. University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 96–97. ISBN 978-0-8122-1685-1.
- ^ Manos, Nick. "Allen, Macon Bolling (1816-1894)". BlackPast.org. Retrieved April 24, 2013.
- ^ a b c The Ordeal of Shadrach Minkins. Massachusetts Historical Society. Retrieved April 23, 2013.
- ^ Edwin Garrison Walker. BlackPast.org. Retrieved April 22, 2013.
- ^ Gary Collison, Shadrach Minkins: From Fugitive Slave to Citizen, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (1998 paperback reprint). pp. 83-87. ISBN 0-674-80299-3.
- ^ The Ordeal of Shadrach Minkins. Massachusetts Historical Society. Retrieved April 23, 2013.
- ^ Abiel Smith School, 46 Joy Street Museum of African American History, Boston and Nantucket. Retrieved April 24, 2013.
- ^ White, Arthur O. "The Black Leadership Class and Education in Antebellum Boston." The Journal of Negro Education, 1973: 9.
- ^ Hilary J. Moss (15 April 2010). Schooling Citizens: The Struggle for African American Education in Antebellum America. University of Chicago Press. pp. 154–. ISBN 978-0-226-54251-5. Retrieved 23 April 2013.
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