5-Year-Old Sarah Roberts Resisted Segregation 100 Years Before Brown v. Board of Education

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28-03-2025

When learning about integration in American public schools, most of our education starts with the 1954 Supreme Court Case Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. This landmark decision declared that legally segregated schools were unconstitutional, and was a giant stride for equal access to a proper public school education for many Americans. However, the fight for school desegregation had actually been in the works for over 100 years.
In 1849, one family took on segregation in Boston, laying early groundwork for that Supreme Court victory nearly a century later. Five-year-old Sarah Roberts, the daughter of a local printer, had to walk past five white schools on her way to the one Black school every morning due to Boston's school segregation laws — and her family decided to fight back.
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Massachusetts was one of the first states to abolish slavery in its Constitution, and by 1790, there was no record of any enslaved people living there. This newly freed Black community settled onto the northern slope of Boston's Beacon Hill neighborhood. Although they lived a couple blocks from the state's capital and opposite some of Boston's wealthier residents, the Black community lived a more modest life.
Many Black Bostonians worked jobs on the city's harbor as mariners. As they obtained more wealth, Boston's Black residents put down roots in their Beacon Hill community, building homes and gathering spaces, like the African Meeting House, which doubled as a church and community center.
As Boston's Black community grew, they were excluded from many public institutions, including the public school system. Prince Hall, a prominent abolitionist and African American Freemason, founded the African School in 1798 with his son, Primus, to serve Black students.
The African School was a community-led education initiative teaching people of all ages in the area. As the school attracted more students, it outgrew the Hall's home and moved to the African Meeting House in 1808. The school could now accommodate more students, but as a community-led institution, it received minimal funding and, therefore, had a shortage of books and materials.
Over two decades later, a public school finally opened for Boston's Black community. Abiel Smith, a wealthy white businessman, left $4,000 in his will for the education of Boston's African American children. With this donation, the Abiel Smith School opened its doors in 1835.
While the Abiel Smith School filled an urgent need for Black children in Boston, many of the same challenges that had existed at the African School, such as overcrowding, limited resources, and poorer conditions than white schools, continued at the Abiel Smith School. Students were mistreated by the majority white teachers and administrators, who neglected the building and its need for extensive repairs. Between 1844 and 1846, over 80 Black residents of Boston's Northern Slope petitioned the Boston Primary School Committee to correct the injustices at Abiel Smith School.
Despite the problems at the Abiel Smith School, it remained the only public school for Black children. Students like Sarah Roberts, who lived roughly half a mile from the Abiel Smith School in Boston's West End neighborhood, had to pass five all-white schools on her walk to the Smith School.
In 1847, Sarah's father, Benjamin Roberts, a local printer, had enough and petitioned the Boston Primary School Committee to send Sarah to the school closest to their home, which was only open to white children. The committee denied his petition four times. The Boston School Committee argued that because his daughter could attend Smith School, she did not need to be admitted into a school closest to her home. In 1848, Roberts ignored the committee and enrolled his daughter in the school closest to her home, but she was promptly ejected and told to attend the Smith School.
Roberts, furious at the treatment of his daughter, enlisted the help of attorney Robert Morris, the first Black man to pass the Massachusetts bar. Morris then recruited Charles Sumner, a white abolitionist and future Massachusetts Senator, to file a lawsuit against the City of Boston.
Morris and Sumner claimed that segregated schooling violated an 1854 statute stating, "Any child, unlawfully excluded from public school instruction, in this Commonwealth, shall recover damages therefor [sic]...against the city or town by which such public school instruction is supported.' In other words, any child in Massachusetts who is illegally left out of any public school can collect any money from the city or town supporting the school they have not been allowed to attend.
In a statement drafted by Morris, Sumner argued in court that 'all men and women were equal under Massachusetts law and that, according to the law, there is no discrimination of color or race inside the public school system."
Sumner and Morris also argued that by excluding Black children from the majority-white school system, the city would continue to uphold a caste system that denied racial equality. Unlike Black children who had to leave their neighborhoods to seek an education, white children in Boston had the option to attend quality schools within their communities. Sumner closed his argument by stating that the Boston Public School Committee had no power to segregate the school system based upon race and that the Massachusetts Constitution had abolished slavery and, therefore, had no authority to uphold a school system based upon race and caste.
Despite Morris and Sumner's compelling argument, Judge Lemuel Shaw of the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Boston Public School Committee. While the state of Massachusetts had equality under the law, Shaw argued, it did not prevent the Boston Public School Committee from separating the schools based on race. The state's law could not fix any of the prejudice or discrimination against African Americans if it did exist; the law itself did not create any of the alleged discrimination. In Shaw's opinion, 'as long as schools segregated based upon race remain equal, they could remain segregated.'
Shaw's decision helped set the legal precedent for 'separate but equal' — or the idea that Black and white people could be segregated so long as the facilities were equal in quality, which they rarely were — in the United States. In 1896, 'separate but equal' would be used in the Supreme Court Case Plessy v. Ferguson, which upheld segregation nationwide.
Although the Roberts family's case was unsuccessful, it inspired many activists and the community along the Northern Slope. In 1849, led by abolitionist speaker and writer William Cooper Nell, Boston's Black community began to boycott the Smith School. The boycott and continued lobbying in the statehouse throughout the first half of the 1850s finally led to change. In April 1855, lawmakers banned legally segregated schoolhouses in Massachusetts.
The Roberts family's courage sparked a significant movement for racial equality in Boston and across this country. While Sarah herself was young and may not have been the one arguing against the city in court, she became the face of this lawsuit and of school desegregation. She is an example of the larger, and at times unspoken, role that Black women and girls played in the school desegregation movement.
After the court case, Sarah Roberts and her family moved around the greater Boston area throughout her childhood. In 1865, at 22 years old, she settled back into Boston. After the Civil War and with the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, Boston's Black community continued the fight for equality, building on the legacy of people like Roberts. Simultaneously, the Roberts case also started a chain reaction that shaped the future of segregation — from the 'separate but equal' clause of Plessy v. Ferguson to the toppling of Brown v. Board of Education over 100 years later.
Today, the Museum of African American History in Boston, Massachusetts, continues to do more research on the life of Sarah Roberts and other Black women who played pivotal roles in the fight for equality.
This article was produced with Made By Us, a coalition of more than 400 history museums working to connect with today's youth.
Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue
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