Morris’s achievements were legion, but he has been largely lost to history.  He was a giant in the Massachusetts legal profession before and after the Civil War, and he played a central role in several  key legal developments in America during his career.  He faced adversity, bigotry and hatred with courage and a firm belief in the law and in himself.

    In 1849, Morris joined with Charles Sumner in challenging legal segregation in Boston’s elementary schools.  Black children were required to attend the Belknap School  just off what is now Joy Street, even if other schools were closer to their homes. 

    The case was tried on stipulated facts, which included a stipulation that the elementary schools were “separate”  for “colored” and white children but otherwise the same in faculty and facilities.  From that, the United States Supreme Court later derived the  concept of “separate but equal,” a phrase that would haunt race relations in the country for over a century. 

    In the case, Roberts v. City of Boston, Morris and Sumner argued that segregating children by race was inherently discriminatory and damaging to the black children.  They argued that  requiring black children to attend an all- black school in essence violated the statute that required cities and towns to provide eduction for all children, even though the statute did not specify how each school system was to be arranged.

    Morris was not deterred.  He joined with William Cooper Nell, Lewis Hayden, William Lloyd Garrison and other giants of the abolition movement to form a grass roots movement to pressure the legislature to change the law.   On April 28, 1855,  Governor Henry Gardner signed a bill into law prohibiting racial segregation in public schools.  Gardner was a member of the “Know-Nothing”  party. Massachusetts became the  first state in the Union to adopt such a law.

    Under orders from President Millard Fillmore, Morris was tried for violating the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and faced a potential death sentence.  Morris was represented by Richard Henry Dana author of Two Years Before the Mast.  He was acquitted after a trial, in part based on the testimony of an alibi witness who swore Morris was not involved in the jail break.  The witness was the Chief Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court, Lemuel Shaw, who had ruled against him in the Roberts case.

    Morris returned to practicing law in Boston and Chelsea, and built a very successful practice that included representing Irish Catholic immigrants - no small feat in a time of bitter hatred and mistrust between blacks and Irish Catholics in the wake of the Potato Famine.  He was so successful that he became known as the “Irish Lawyer”.

    We believe there are many lessons in Morris’s life story.  We assembled an outstanding faculty to introduce Morris to the students.   This was a wonderful program to help fulfill the federal obligation all schools have to teach a course on the Constitution on September 17.  Over 350 students from all across Massachusetts participated.