The remedy lies with Congress. A remonstrance at least
should be heard from the colored members of Congress,
who are insulted whenever a colored boy is ill-treated
by the students or the officers of these institutions.
So far from being discouraged by defeats, the unjust
treatment meted out to these young men should redouble
the efforts of others of their class to carry this new
Bastile by storm. It should lead every colored
Congressman to make sure that he either sends a colored
applicant or a white one who has not the seeds of
snobbery and caste in his soul. Smith, after four years
of torture, comes home, is driven home, because, forsooth,
he might attend the ball next year! He is hounded out of
the Academy because he would have to be assigned to a
white regiment! There are some negroes who feel that
their rights in the land of their birth are superior to
the prejudices of the enemies of the Union, and who dare
to speak and write in behalf of these rights, as their
fathers dared to fight for them a very few years ago.
"Bouchet, under civil rule, enters Yale College the
best prepared student of one hundred and thirty
freshmen, and all through his course is treated like
a gentleman, both by the faculty and the students, men
who know what justice means, and have some adequate
idea of the true theory of education and gentlemanly
conduct. Two freed boys, from North Carolina and South
Carolina, slaves during the war, prepare at the best
Northern academics, and enter, without remonstrance,
Amherst and Dartmouth.
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