This was the very first school desegregation case filed in the United States. Black families in Boston, Massachusetts applauded the city’s creation of two public schools serving Black children. Unfortunately, it became clear these schools weren’t funded enough to provide an equal education. Community members petitioned the Boston Primary School Committee to desegregate the city’s schools. They were turned down three times. Benjamin Roberts was the publisher of an abolitionist newspaper and came from a family of activists who’d fought for racial equality since the Revolutionary War. He sued the city on behalf of his five-year-old daughter, Sarah. Every morning, Sarah walked past five well-funded, all-White public schools before reaching the deteriorating school she and other Black children attended. Roberts suggested this was humiliating and unfair. He sued the city with the help of attorneys Robert Morris (one of the first Black lawyers in the country) and Charles Sumner (a white ally and future Massachusetts senator). Sumner echoed the Massachusetts constitution, saying "all men, without distinction of color or race, are equal before the law." He argued the racial segregation of schools violated this concept of equality. Massachusetts Supreme Court Justice Lemuel Shaw ruled that separate schools were better for both Black and white children. This decision later influenced the outcome of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), securing the “separate but equal” doctrine. Though Roberts lost his case, he and other local activists continued fighting for desegregation. Consequently, in 1855, the Massachusetts legislature passed a state law forbidding segregated education. Still, it took over 100 years for the nation to gain equal education. Interestingly, some of Sumner’s arguments were invoked in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), helping to desegregate schools, after all.  [281 words]