no hand raised to defend them. But that was in Turkey. Here in the
United States more than thirty years after the Proclamation of
Emancipation in one of the sovereign States of the Union, half a
dozen men and women are arrested for the crime of treating black
children and white children alike, for not drawing a caste line in
their own private grounds in a school they conduct at no expense
to the State. It is a curious humiliating occurrence for this
Jubilee year of the American Missionary Association."

From the _Advance_:

"Florida's disgraceful Sheats law, specially designed for the
teachers and supporters of Orange Park Academy, has at last been
put in force. The teachers of the Academy, the pastor of the
church, and the parents of the white pupils have been arrested for
violation of this law, which forbids any one to maintain or
patronize a school in which white persons and Negroes shall be
taught or boarded within the same building.

And this is the State of Senator Call, who is declaiming so
eloquently in behalf of the Cuban insurgents, more than half of
whom are of Negro blood."

From the _Boston Standard_:

"A year ago the unconstitutional and vile Sheats law was passed by
the legislature of Florida. It was understood that this law was
particularly aimed at the Orange Park School, of the American
Missionary Association, whose fiftieth anniversary is to be
celebrated in this city next fall. This villainous statute was
enforced in the case of the Orange Park School on the entire body
of teachers, white men and women of spotless character and
self-sacrificing devotion to the mission, because of educating
teachers for the elevation of American citizenship. The normal
school is one of the best and most useful of the educational
agencies at work in the South, but had dared to ignore the
outrageous statute which makes it a crime for any school, public
or private, to teach black and white scholars in the same building
or have any white teachers to eat and sleep in the same house with
their Negro pupils. If these discretionary rights are not
guaranteed by our national Constitution to American citizens, then
the professed abolition of slavery and of the color line in
citizenship is a wretched farce. Nobody can question the intent of
the proclamation of emancipation o