Charles Sumner describes encountering an African-American student at the Sorbonne.

In his journal, Sumner writes, “They were standing in the midst of a knot of young men, and their color seemed to be no objection to them. I was glad to see this, though with American impressions, it seemed very strange. It must be then, that the distance between free blacks and the whites among us [at home] is derived from education, and does not exist in the nature of things.”