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The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861
Chapter VI - Educating the Urban Negro
by Woodson, Carter Godwin
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Such an impetus was given Negro education during the period of better
beginnings that some of the colored city schools then established have
existed even until to-day. Negroes learned from their white friends to
educate themselves. In the Middle and Southern States, however, much
of the sentiment in favor of developing the intellect of the Negro
passed away during the early part of the nineteenth century. This
reform, like many others of that day, suffered when Americans forgot
the struggle for the rights of man. Recovering from the social
upheaval of the Revolution, caste soon began to claim its own. To
discourage the education of the lowest class was natural to the
aristocrats who on coming to power established governments based on
the representation of interests, restriction of suffrage, and the
ineligibility of the poor to office. After this period the work of
enlightening the blacks in the southern and border States was largely
confined to a few towns and cities where the concentration of the
colored population continued.
The rise of the American city made possible the contact of the colored
people with the world, affording them a chance to observe what the
white man was doing, and to develop the power to care for themselves.
The Negroes who had this opportunity to take over the western
civilization were servants belonging to the families for which they
worked; slaves hired out by their owners to wait upon persons; and
watermen, embracing fishermen, boatmen, and sailors. Not a few slaves
in cities were mechanics, clerks, and overseers. In most of these
employments the rudiments of an education were necessary, and what the
master did not seem disposed to teach the slaves so situated, they
usually learned by contact with their fellowmen who were better
informed. Such persons were the mulattoes resulting from
miscegenation, and therefore protected from the rigors of the slave
code; house servants, rewarded with unusual privileges for fidelity
and for manifesting considerable interest in things contributing to
the economic good of their masters; and slaves who were purchasing
their freedom.[1] Before the close of the first quarter of the
nineteenth century not much was said about what these classes learned
or taught. It was then the difference in circumstances, employment,
and opportunities for improvement that made the urban Negro more
intelligent than those who had to toil in the fields. Yet, the
proportion did not differ very much from that of the previous
period, as the first Negroes were not chiefly field hands but to a
considerable extent house servants, whom masters often taught to read
and write.
[Footnote 1: Jones, "Religious Instruction", p. 117.]
Urban Negroes had another important advantage in their opportunity to
attend well-regulated Sunday-schools. These were extensively organized
in the towns and cities of this country during the first decades of
the last century. The "Sabbath-school" constituted an important factor
in Negro education. Although cloaked with the purpose of bringing the
blacks to God by giving them religious instruction the institution
permitted its workers to teach them reading and writing when they were
not allowed to study such in other institutions.[1] Even the radical
slaveholder was slow to object to a policy which was intended to
facilitate the conversion of men's souls. All friends especially
interested in the mental and spiritual uplift of the race hailed this
movement as marking an epoch in the elevation of the colored people.
[Footnote 1: See the reports of almost any abolition society of the
first quarter of the nineteenth century. "Special Report of the U.S.
Com. of Ed"., 1871, p. 200; and Plumer, "Thoughts on the Religious
Instruction of Negroes".]
In the course of time racial difficulties caused the development of
the colored "Sabbath-school" to be very much like that of the American
Negro Church. It began as an establishment in the white churches,
then moved to the colored chapels, where white persons assisted as
teachers, and finally became an organization composed entirely of
Negroes. But the separation here, as in the case of the church,
was productive of some good. The "Sabbath-schools," which at first
depended on white teachers to direct their work, were thereafter
carried on by Negroes, who studied and prepared themselves to perform
the task given up by their former friends. This change was easily made
in certain towns and cities where Negroes already had churches of
their own. Before 1815 there was a Methodist church in Charleston,
South Carolina, with a membership of eighteen hundred, more than one
thousand of whom were persons of color. About this time, Williamsburg
and Augusta had one each, and Savannah three colored Baptist churches.
By 1822 the Negroes of Petersburg had in addition to two churches of
this denomination, a flourishing African Missionary Society.[1] In
Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston the free
blacks had experienced such a rapid religious development that colored
churches in these cities were no longer considered unusual.
[Footnote 1: Adams, "Anti-slavery", etc., pp. 73 and 74.]
The increase in the population of cities brought a larger number of
these unfortunates into helpful contact with the urban element of
white people who, having few Negroes, often opposed the institution of
slavery. But thrown among colored people brought in their crude state
into sections of culture, the antislavery men of towns and cities
developed from theorists, discussing a problem of concern to persons
far away, into actual workers striving by means of education to pave
the way for universal freedom.[1] Large as the number of abolitionists
became and bright as the future of their cause seemed, the more the
antislavery men saw of the freedmen in congested districts, the more
inclined the reformers were to think that instant abolition was an
event which they "could not reasonably expect, and perhaps could not
desire." Being in a state of deplorable ignorance, the slaves did not
possess sufficient information "to render their immediate emancipation
a blessing either to themselves or to society."[2]
[Footnote 1: As some masters regarded the ignorance of the slaves as
an argument against their emancipation, the antislavery men's problem
became the education of the master as well as that of the slave.
Believing that intellectual and moral improvement is a "safe and
permanent basis on which the arch of freedom could be erected," Jesse
Torrey, harking back to Jefferson's proposition, recommended that
it begin by instructing the slaveholders, overseers, their sons and
daughters, hitherto deprived of the blessing of education. Then he
thought that such enlightened masters should see to it that every
slave less than thirty years of age should be taught the art of
reading sufficiently for receiving moral and religious instruction
from books in the English language. In presenting this scheme Torrey
had the idea of most of the antislavery men of that day, who advocated
the education of slaves because they believed that, whenever the
slaves should become qualified by intelligence and moral cultivation
for the rational enjoyment of liberty and the performance of the
various social duties, enlightened legislators would listen to the
voice of reason and justice and the spirit of the social organization,
and permit the release of the slave without banishing him as a traitor
from his native land. See Torrey's "Portraiture of Domestic Slavery",
p. 21.]
[Footnote 2: Sidney, "An Oration Commemorative of the Abolition of the
Slave Trade in the United States", p. 5; and Adams, "Anti-slavery",
etc., pp. 40, 43, 65, and 66.]
Yet in the same proportion that antislavery men convinced masters of
the wisdom of the policy of gradual emancipation, they increased their
own burden of providing extra facilities of education, for liberated
Negroes generally made their way from the South to urban communities
of the Northern and Middle States. The friends of the colored people,
however, met this exigency by establishing additional schools and
repeatedly entreating these migrating freedmen to avail themselves
of their opportunities. The address of the American Convention of
Abolition Societies in 1819 is typical of these appeals.[1] They
requested free persons of color to endeavor as much as possible to use
economy in their expenses, to save something from their earnings
for the education of their children ... and "let all those who by
attending to this admonition have acquired means, send their children
to school as soon as they are old enough, where their morals will
be an object of attention as well as their improvement in school
learning." Then followed some advice which would now seem strange.
They said, "Encourage, also, those among you who are qualified as
teachers of schools, and when you are able to pay, never send your
children to free schools; for this may be considered as robbing the
poor of their opportunities which are intended for them alone."[2]
[Footnote 1: "Proceedings of the American Convention", etc., 1819, p.
21.]
[Footnote 2: "Proceedings of the American Convention", etc., 1819, p.
22.]
The concentration of the colored population in cities and towns where
they had better educational advantages tended to make colored city
schools self-supporting. There developed a class of self-educating
Negroes who were able to provide for their own enlightenment. This
condition, however, did not obtain throughout the South. Being a
proslavery farming section of few large towns and cities, that part of
the country did not see much development of the self-sufficient class.
What enlightenment most urban blacks of the South experienced resulted
mainly from private teaching and religious instruction. There were
some notable exceptions, however. A colored "Santo Dominican" named
Julian Troumontaine taught openly in Savannah up to 1829 when such
an act was prohibited by law. He taught clandestinely thereafter,
however, until 1844.[1] In New Orleans, where the Creoles and freedmen
counted early in the nineteenth century as a substantial element in
society, persons of color had secured to themselves better facilities
of education. The people of this city did not then regard it as a
crime for Negroes to acquire an education, their white instructors
felt that they were not condescending in teaching them, and children
of Caucasian blood raised no objection to attending special and
parochial schools accessible to both races. The educational privileges
which the colored people there enjoyed, however, were largely paid for
by the progressive freedmen themselves.[2] Some of them educated their
children in France.
[Footnote 1: Wright, "Negro Education in Georgia", p. 20.]
[Footnote 2: Many of the mixed breeds of New Orleans were leading
business men.]
Charleston, South Carolina, furnished a good example of a center of
unusual activity and rapid strides of self-educating urban Negroes.
Driven to the point of doing for themselves, the free people of color
of this city organized in 1810 the "Minor Society" to secure to their
orphan children the benefits of education.[1] Bishop Payne, who
studied later under Thomas Bonneau, attended the school founded by
this organization. Other colored schools were doing successful work.
Enjoying these unusual advantages the Negroes of Charleston were
early in the nineteenth century ranked by some as economically and
intellectually superior to any other such persons in the United
States. A large portion of the leading mechanics, fashionable tailors,
shoe manufacturers, and mantua-makers were free blacks, who enjoyed "a
consideration in the community far more than that enjoyed by any of
the colored population in the Northern cities."[2] As such positions
required considerable skill and intelligence, these laborers had of
necessity acquired a large share of useful knowledge. The favorable
circumstances of the Negroes in certain liberal southern cities like
Charleston were the cause of their return from the North to the South,
where they often had a better opportunity for mental as well
as economic improvement.[3] The return of certain Negroes from
Philadelphia to Petersburg, Virginia, during the first decade of the
nineteenth century, is a case in evidence.[4]
[Footnote 1: Simmons, "Men of Mark", p. 1078.]
[Footnote 2: "Niles Register", vol. xlix., p. 40.]
[Footnote 3: "Notions of the Americans", p. 26.]
[Footnote 4: Wright, "Views of Society and Manners in America", p.
73.]
The successful strivings of the race in the District of Columbia
furnish us with striking examples of Negroes making educational
progress. When two white teachers, Henry Potter and Mrs. Haley,
invited black children to study with their white pupils, the colored
people gladly availed themselves of this opportunity.[1] Mrs. Maria
Billings, the first to establish a real school for Negroes in
Georgetown, soon discovered that she had their hearty support. She had
pupils from all parts of the District of Columbia, and from as far as
Bladensburg, Maryland. The tuition fee in some of these schools was
a little high, but many free blacks of the District of Columbia
were sufficiently well established to meet these demands. The rapid
progress made by the Bell and Browning families during this period
was of much encouragement to the ambitious colored people, who were
laboring to educate their children.[2]
[Footnote 1: "Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed.", 1871, pp. 195
"et seq."]
[Footnote 2: "Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed.", 1871, p. 195.]
The city Negroes, however, were learning to do more than merely attend
accessible elementary schools. In 1807 George Bell, Nicholas
Franklin, and Moses Liverpool, former slaves, built the first colored
schoolhouse in the District of Columbia. Just emerging from bondage,
these men could not teach themselves, but employed a white man to
take charge of the school.[1] It was not a success. Pupils of color
thereafter attended the school of Anne Maria Hall, a teacher from
Prince George County, Maryland, and those of teachers who instructed
white children.[2] The ambitious Negroes of the District of Columbia,
however, were not discouraged by the first failure to provide their
own educational facilities. The Bell School which had been closed and
used as a dwelling, opened again in 1818 under the auspices of an
association of free people of color of the city of Washington called
the "Resolute Beneficial Society." The school was declared open then
"for the reception of free people of color and others that ladies
and gentlemen may think proper to send to be instructed in reading,
writing, arithmetic, English grammar, or other branches of education
apposite to their capacities, by steady, active and experienced
teachers, whose attention is wholly devoted to the purpose described."
The founders presumed that free colored families would embrace the
advantages thus presented to them either by subscription to the funds
of the Society or by sending their children to the school. Since the
improvement of the intellect and the morals of the colored youth were
the objects of the institution, the patronage of benevolent ladies
and gentlemen was solicited. They declared, too, that "to avoid
disagreeable occurrences no writing was to be done by the teacher for
a slave, neither directly nor indirectly to serve the purpose of a
slave on any account whatever."[3] This school was continued until
1822 under Mr. Pierpont, of Massachusetts, a relative of the poet.
He was succeeded two years later by John Adams, a shoemaker, who was
known as the first Negro to teach in the District of Columbia.[4]
[Footnote 1: "Ibid.", 196.]
[Footnote 2: "Ibid.", 197.]
[Footnote 3: "Daily National Intelligencer", August 29, 1818.]
[Footnote 4: "Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed.", 1871, p. 198.]
Of equal importance was the colored seminary established by Henry
Smothers, a pupil of Mrs. Billings. Like her, he taught first in
Georgetown. He began his advanced work near the Treasury building,
having an attendance of probably one hundred and fifty pupils,
generally paying tuition. The fee, however, was not compulsory.
Smothers taught for about two years, and then was succeeded by John
Prout, a colored man of rare talents, who later did much in opposition
to the scheme of transporting Negroes to Africa before they had the
benefits of education.[1] The school was then called the "Columbian
Institute." Prout was later assisted by Mrs. Anne Maria Hall.[2]
[Footnote 1: "Ibid.", 1871, p. 199.]
[Footnote 2: Other schools of importance were springing up from year
to year. As early as 1824 Mrs. Mary Wall, a member of the Society
of Friends, had opened a school for Negroes and received so many
applications that many had to be refused. From this school came many
well-prepared colored men, among whom were James Wormley and John
Thomas Johnson. Another school was established by Thomas Tabbs, who
received "a polished education from the distinguished Maryland family
to which he belonged." Mr. Tabbs came to Washington before the War
of 1812 and began teaching those who came to him when he had a
schoolhouse, and when he had none he went from house to house,
stopping even under the trees to teach wherever he found pupils who
were interested. See "Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed.", 1871,
pp. 212, 213, and 214.]
Of this self-educative work of Negroes some of the best was
accomplished by colored women. With the assistance of Father Vanlomen,
the benevolent priest then in charge of the Holy Trinity Church, Maria
Becraft, the most capable colored woman in the District of Columbia at
that time, established there the first seminary for the education of
colored girls. She had begun to teach in a less desirable section, but
impressed with the unusual beauty and strong character of this girl,
Father Vanlomen had her school transferred to a larger building on
Fayette Street where she taught until 1831. She then turned over her
seminary to girls she had trained, and became a teacher in a convent
at Baltimore as a Sister of Providence.[1] Other good results were
obtained by Louisa Parke Costin, a member of one of the oldest
colored families in the District of Columbia. Desiring to diffuse the
knowledge she acquired from white teachers in the early mixed schools
of the District, she decided to teach. She opened her school just
about the time that Henry Smothers was making his reputation as an
educator. She died in 1831, after years of successful work had crowned
her efforts. Her task was then taken up by her sister, Martha, who had
been trained in the Convent Seminary of Baltimore.[2]
[Footnote 1: "Ibid.", p. 204.]
[Footnote 2: "Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed.", 1871, p. 203.]
Equally helpful was the work of Arabella Jones. Educated at the St.
Frances Academy at Baltimore, she was well grounded in the English
branches and fluent in French. She taught on the "Island," calling her
school "The St. Agnes Academy."[1] Another worker of this class
was Mary Wormley, once a student in the Colored Female Seminary of
Philadelphia under Sarah Douglass. This lady began teaching about
1830, getting some assistance from Mr. Calvert, an Englishman.[2] The
institution passed later into the hands of Thomas Lee, during the
incumbency of whom the school was closed by the "Snow Riot." This
was an attempt on the part of the white people to get rid of the
progressive Negroes of the District of Columbia. Their excuse for
such drastic action was that Benjamin Snow, a colored man running a
restaurant in the city, had made unbecoming remarks about the wives
of the white mechanics.[3] John F. Cook, one of the most influential
educators produced in the District of Columbia, was driven out of the
city by this mob. He then taught at Lancaster, Pa.
[Footnote 1: "Ibid.", p. 211.]
[Footnote 2: "Ibid.", p. 211.]
[Footnote 3: "Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed.", p. 201.]
While the colored schools of the District of Columbia suffered as a
result of this disturbance, the Negroes then in charge of them were
too ambitious, too well-educated to discontinue their work. The
situation, however, was in no sense encouraging. With the exception of
the churches of the Catholics and Quakers who vied with each other in
maintaining a benevolent attitude toward the education of the colored
people,[1] the churches of the District of Columbia, in the Sabbath
schools of which Negroes once sat in the same seats with white
persons, were on account of this riot closed to the darker race.[2]
This expulsion however, was not an unmixed evil, for the colored
people themselves thereafter established and directed a larger number
of institutions of learning.[3]
[Footnote 1: The Catholics admitted the colored people to their
churches on equal footing with others when they were driven to the
galleries of the Protestant churches. Furthermore, they continued
to admit them to their parochial schools. The Sisters of Georgetown
trained colored girls, and the parochial school of the Aloysius Church
at one time had as many as two hundred and fifty pupils of color. Many
of the first colored teachers of the District of Columbia obtained
their education in these schools. See "Special Report of U.S. Com. of
Ed.", 1871, p. 218 "et. seq."]
[Footnote 2: "Sp. Report", etc. 187, pp. 217, 218, 219, 220, 221.]
[Footnote 3: "Ibid.", pp. 220-222.]
The colored schools of the District of Columbia soon resumed their
growth recovering most of the ground they had lost and exhibiting
evidences of more systematic work. These schools ceased to be
elementary classes, offering merely courses in reading and writing,
but developed into institutions of higher grade supplied with
competent teachers. Among other useful schools then flourishing in
this vicinity were those of Alfred H. Parry, Nancy Grant, Benjamin
McCoy, John Thomas Johnson, James Enoch Ambush, and Dr. John H.
Fleet.[1] John F. Cook returned from Pennsylvania and reopened his
seminary.[2] About this time there flourished a school established by
Fannie Hampton. After her death the work was carried on by Margaret
Thompson until 1846. She then married Charles Middleton and became
his assistant teacher. He was a free Negro who had been educated in
Savannah, Georgia, while attending school with white and colored
children. He founded a successful school about the time that Fleet and
Johnson[3] retired. Middleton's school,
however, owes its importance to the fact that it was connected with
the movement for free colored public schools started by Jesse E. Dow,
an official of the city, and supported by Rev. Doctor Wayman, then
pastor of the Bethel Church.[4] Other colaborers with these teachers
were Alexander Cornish, Richard Stokes, and Margaret Hill.[5]
[Footnote 1: "Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed.", 1871, pp. 212,
213, and 283.]
[Footnote 2: "Ibid.", p. 200.]
[Footnote 3: Compelled to leave Washington in 1838 because of the
persecution of free persons of color, Johnson stopped in Pittsburg
where he entered a competitive teacher examination with two white
aspirants and won the coveted position. He taught in Pittsburg
several years, worked on the Mississippi a while, returned later to
Washington, and in 1843 constructed a building in which he opened
another school. It was attended by from 150 to 200 students, most of
whom belonged to the most prominent colored families of the District
of Columbia. See "Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed.", 1871, p.
214.]
[Footnote 4: "Ibid.", p. 215.]
[Footnote 5: "Ibid.", pp. 214-215.]
Then came another effort on a large scale. This was the school of
Alexander Hays, an emancipated slave of the Fowler family of Maryland.
Hays succeeded his wife as a teacher. He soon had the support of such
prominent men as Rev. Doctor Sampson, William Winston Seaton and R.S.
Coxe. Joseph T. and Thomas H. Mason and Mr. and Mrs. Fletcher were
Hays's contemporaries. The last two were teachers from England.
On account of the feeling then developing against white persons
instructing Negroes, these philanthropists saw their schoolhouses
burned, themselves expelled from the white churches, and finally
driven from the city in 1858.[1] Other white men and women were
teaching colored children during these years. The most prominent of
these were Thomas Tabbs, an erratic philanthropist, Mr. Nutall, an
Englishman; Mr. Talbot, a successful tutor stationed near the present
site of the Franklin School; and Mrs. George Ford, a Virginian,
conducting a school on New Jersey Avenue between K and L Streets.[2]
The efforts of Miss Myrtilla Miner, their contemporary, will be
mentioned elsewhere.[3]
[Footnote 1: Besides the classes taught by these workers there was
the Eliza Ann Cook private school; Miss Washington's school; a select
primary school; a free Catholic school maintained by the St. Vincent
de Paul Society, an association of colored Catholics in connection
with St. Matthew's Church. This institution was organized by the
benevolent Father Walter at the Smothers School. Then there were
teachers like Elizabeth Smith, Isabella Briscoe, Charlotte Beams,
James Shorter, Charlotte Gordon, and David Brown. Furthermore, various
churches, parochial, and Sunday-schools were then sharing the burden
of educating the Negro population of the District of Columbia. See
"Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed.", 1871, pp. 214, 215, 216,
217, 218 "et seq."]
[Footnote 2: "Ibid.", p. 214.]
[Footnote 3: O'Connor, Myrtilla Miner, p. 80.]
The Negroes of Baltimore were almost as self-educating as those of the
District of Columbia. The coming of the refugees and French Fathers
from Santo Domingo to Baltimore to escape the revolution[1] marked an
epoch in the intellectual progress of the colored people of that city.
Thereafter their intellectual class had access to an increasing black
population, anxious to be enlightened. Given this better working
basis, they secured from the ranks of the Catholics additional
catechists and teachers to give a larger number of illiterates the
fundamentals of education. Their untiring co-worker in furnishing
these facilities, was the Most Reverend Ambrose Maréchal, Archbishop
of Baltimore from 1817 to 1828.[2] These schools were such an
improvement over those formerly opened to Negroes that colored youths
of other towns and cities thereafter came to Baltimore for higher
training.[3]
[Footnote 1: Drewery, "Slave Insurrections in Virginia", p. 121.]
[Footnote 2: "Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed.", 1871, p. 205.]
[Footnote 3: "Ibid.", p. 205.]
The coming of these refugees to Baltimore had a direct bearing on the
education of colored girls. Their condition excited the sympathy of
the immigrating colored women. These ladies had been educated both in
the Island of Santo Domingo and in Paris. At once interested in the
uplift of this sex, they soon constituted the nucleus of the society
that finally formed the St. Frances Academy for girls in connection
with the Oblate Sisters of Providence Convent in Baltimore, June 5,
1829.[1] This step was sanctioned by the Reverend James Whitefield,
the successor of Archbishop Maréchal, and was later approved by the
Holy See. The institution was located on Richmond Street in a building
which on account of the rapid growth of the school soon gave way to
larger quarters. The aim of the institution was to train girls, all
of whom "would become mothers or household servants, in such solid
virtues and religious and moral principles as modesty, honesty, and
integrity."[2] To reach this end they endeavored to supply the school
with cultivated and capable teachers. Students were offered courses in
all the branches of "refined and useful education, including all that
is regularly taught in well regulated female seminaries."[3] This
school was so well maintained that it survived all reactionary attacks
and became a center of enlightenment for colored women.
[Footnote 1: "Ibid.", p. 205.]
[Footnote 2: "Ibid.", p. 206.]
[Footnote 3: "Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed.", p. 206.]
At the same time there were other persons and organizations in the
field. Prominent among the first of these workers was Daniel Coker,
known to fame as a colored Methodist missionary, who was sent to
Liberia. Prior to 1812 he had in Baltimore an academy which certain
students from Washington attended when they had no good schools of
their own, and when white persons began to object to the co-education
of the races. Because of these conditions two daughters of George
Bell, the builder of the first colored schoolhouse in the District of
Columbia, went to Baltimore to study under Coker.[1] An adult Negro
school in this city had 180 pupils in 1820. There were then in the
Baltimore Sunday-schools about 600 Negroes. They had formed themselves
into a Bible association which had been received into the connection
of the Baltimore Bible Society.[2] In 1825 the Negroes there had a day
and a night school, giving courses in Latin and French. Four years
later there appeared an "African Free School" with an attendance of
from 150 to 175 every Sunday.[3]
[Footnote 1: "Ibid.", p. 196.]
[Footnote 2: Adams, "Anti-slavery", etc., p. 14.]
[Footnote 3: Adams, "Anti-Slavery", etc., pp. 14 and 15.]
By 1830 the Negroes of Baltimore had several special schools of their
own.[1] In 1835 there was behind the African Methodist Church in Sharp
Street a school of seventy pupils in charge of William Watkins.[2] W.
Livingston, an ordained clergyman of the Episcopal Church, had then a
colored school of eighty pupils in the African Church at the corner of
Saratoga and Ninth Streets.[3] A third school of this kind was kept by
John Fortie at the Methodist Bethel Church in Fish Street. Five or six
other schools of some consequence were maintained by free women of
color, who owed their education to the Convent of the Oblate Sisters
of Providence.[4] Observing these conditions, an interested person
thought that much more would have been accomplished in that community,
if the friends of the colored people had been able to find workers
acceptable to the masters and at the same time competent to teach the
slaves.[5] Yet another observer felt that the Negroes of Baltimore had
more opportunities than they embraced.[6]
[Footnote 1: Buckingham, "America, Historical", etc., vol. i., p.
438.]
[Footnote 2: "Ibid.", p. 438; Andrews, "Slavery and the Domestic Slave
Trade", pp. 54, 55, and 56; and Varle, "A Complete View of Baltimore",
p. 33.]
[Footnote 3: Varle, "A Complete View of Baltimore", p. 33; and
Andrews, "Slavery and the Domestic Slave Trade", pp. 85 and 92.]
[Footnote 4: "Ibid.", p. 33.]
[Footnote 5: "Ibid.", p. 54.]
[Footnote 6: "Ibid.", p. 37.]
These conditions, however, were so favorable in 1835 that when
Professor E.A. Andrews came to Baltimore to introduce the work of
the American Union for the Relief and Improvement of the Colored
People,[1] he was informed that the education of the Negroes of that
city was fairly well provided for. Evidently the need was that the
"systematic and sustained exertions" of the workers should spring
from a more nearly perfect organization "to give efficiency to their
philanthropic labors."[2] He was informed that as his society was of
New England, it would on account of its origin in the wrong quarter,
be productive of mischief.[3] The leading people of Baltimore
thought that it would be better to accomplish this task through the
Colonization Society, a southern organization carrying out the very
policy which the American Union proposed to pursue.[4]
[Footnote 1: On January 14, 1835, a convention of more than one
hundred gentlemen from ten different States assembled in Boston and
organized the "American Union for the Relief and Improvement of the
Colored Race." Among these workers were William Reed, Daniel Noyes,
J.W. Chickering, J.W. Putnam, Baron Stow, B.B. Edwards, E.A. Andrews,
Charles Scudder, Joseph Tracy, Samuel Worcester, and Charles Tappan.
The gentlemen were neither antagonistic to the antislavery nor to the
colonization societies. They aimed to do that which had been neglected
in giving the Negroes proper preparation for freedom. Knowing that
the actual emancipation of an oppressed race cannot be effected by
legislation, they hoped to provide religious and literary instruction
for all colored children that they might "ameliorate their economic
condition" and prepare themselves for higher usefulness. See the
"Exposition of the Object and Plans of the American Union", pp.
11-14.]
[Footnote 2: Andrews, "Slavery and the Domestic Slave Trade", p. 57.]
[Footnote 3: "Ibid"., p. 188.]
[Footnote 4: Andrews, "Slavery", etc., p. 56.]
The instruction of ambitious blacks in this city was not confined to
mere rudimentary training. The opportunity for advanced study was
offered colored girls in the Convent of the Oblate Sisters of
Providence. These Negroes, however, early learned to help themselves.
In 1835 considerable assistance came from Nelson Wells, one of their
own color. He left to properly appointed trustees the sum of $10,000,
the income of which was to be appropriated to the education of free
colored children.[1] With this benefaction the trustees concerned
established in 1835 what they called the Wells School. It offered
Negroes free instruction long after the Civil War.
[Footnote 2: "Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed"., 1871, p. 353.]
In seeking to show how these good results were obtained by the
Negroes' coöperative power and ability to supply their own needs, we
are not unmindful of the assistance which they received. To say that
the colored people of Baltimore, themselves, provided all these
facilities of education would do injustice to the benevolent element
of that city. Among its white people were found so much toleration
of opinion on slavery and so much sympathy with the efforts for its
removal, that they not only permitted the establishment of Negro
churches, but opened successful colored schools in which white men
and women assisted personally in teaching. Great praise is due
philanthropists of the type of John Breckenridge and Daniel Raymond,
who contributed their time and means to the cause and enlisted the
efforts of others. Still greater credit should be given to William
Crane, who for forty years was known as an "ardent, liberal, and wise
friend of the black man." At the cost of $20,000 he erected in the
central part of the city an edifice exclusively for the benefit of
the colored people. In this building was an auditorium, several
large schoolrooms, and a hall for entertainments and lectures. The
institution employed a pastor and two teachers[1] and it was often
mentioned as a high school.
[Footnote 1: A contributor to the "Christian Chronicle" found in this
institution a pastor, a principal of the school, and an assistant,
all of superior qualifications. The classes which this reporter heard
recite grammar and geography convinced him of the thoroughness of the
work and the unusual readiness of the colored people to learn. See
"The African Repository", vol. xxxii., p. 91.]
In northern cities like Philadelphia and New York, where benevolent
organizations provided an adequate number of colored schools, the free
blacks did not develop so much of the power to educate themselves. The
Negroes of these cities, however, cannot be considered exceptions to
the rule. Many of those of Philadelphia were of the most ambitious
kind, men who had purchased their freedom or had developed sufficient
intelligence to delude their would-be captors and conquer the
institution of slavery. Settled in this community, the thrifty class
accumulated wealth which they often used, not only to defray the
expenses of educating their own children, but to provide educational
facilities for the poor children of color.
Gradually developing the power to help themselves, the free people
of color organized a society which in 1804 opened a school with John
Trumbull as teacher.[1] About the same time the African Episcopalians
founded a colored school at their church.[2] A colored man gave three
hundred pounds of the required funds to build the first colored
schoolhouse in Philadelphia.[3] In 1830 one fourth of the twelve
hundred colored children in the schools of that city paid for their
instruction, whereas only two hundred and fifty were attending the
public schools in 1825.[4] The fact that some of the Negroes were able
and willing to share the responsibility of enlightening their people
caused a larger number of philanthropists to come to the rescue
of those who had to depend on charity. Furthermore, of the many
achievements claimed for the colored schools of Philadelphia none were
considered more significant than that they produced teachers qualified
to carry on this work. Eleven of the sixteen colored schools in
Philadelphia in 1822 were taught by teachers of African descent. In
1830 the system was practically in the hands of Negroes.[5]
[Footnote 1: Turner, "The Negro in Pennsylvania", p. 129.]
[Footnote 2: "Ibid.", p. 130.]
[Footnote 3: "Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed.", 1871, p. 377.]
[Footnote 4: "Proceedings of the American Convention", etc., 1825, p.
13.]
[Footnote 5: "Proceedings of the Am. Convention", etc., 1830, p.8; and
Wickersham, "History of Education in Pennsylvania", p. 253.]
The statistics of later years show how successful these early efforts
had been. By 1849 the colored schools of Philadelphia had developed
to the extent that they seemed like a system. According to the
"Statistical Inquiry into the Condition of Colored People in and about
Philadelphia", published that year, there were 1643 children of color
attending well-regulated schools. The larger institutions were mainly
supported by State and charitable organizations of which the Society
of Friends and the Pennsylvania Abolition Society were the most
important. Besides supporting these institutions, however, the
intelligent colored men of Philadelphia had maintained smaller schools
and organized a system of lyceums and debating clubs, one of which had
a library of 1400 volumes. Moreover, there were then teaching in the
colored families and industrial schools of Philadelphia many men and
women of both races.[1] Although these instructors restricted their
work to the teaching of the rudiments of education, they did much to
help the more advanced schools to enlighten the Negroes who came to
that city in large numbers when conditions became intolerable for
the free people of color in the slave States. The statistics of the
following decade show unusual progress. In the year 1859 there were
in the colored public schools of Philadelphia, 1031 pupils; in the
charity schools, 748; in the benevolent schools, 211; in private
schools, 331; in all, 2321, whereas in 1849 there were only 1643.[2]
[Footnote 1: About the middle of the nineteenth century colored
schools of various kinds arose in Philadelphia. With a view to giving
Negroes industrial training their friends opened "The School for the
Destitute" at the House of Industry in 1848. Three years later Sarah
Luciana was teaching a school of seventy youths at this House of
Industry, and the Sheppard School, another industrial institution,
was in operation in 1850 in a building bearing the same name. In 1849
arose the "Corn Street Unclassified School" of forty-seven children
in charge of Sarah L. Peltz. "The Holmesburg Unclassified School" was
organized in 1854. Other institutions of various purposes were "The
House of Refuge," "The Orphans' Shelter," and "The Home for
Colored Children." See Bacon, "Statistics of the Colored People of
Philadelphia", 1859.
Among those then teaching in private schools of Philadelphia were
Solomon Clarkson, Robert George, John Marshall, John Ross, Jonathan
Tudas, and David Ware. Ann Bishop, Virginia Blake, Amelia Bogle, Anne
E. Carey, Sarah Ann Douglass, Rebecca Hailstock, Emma Hall, Emmeline
Higgins, Margaret Johnson, Martha Richards, Dinah Smith, Mary Still,
and one Peterson were teaching in families. See "Statistical Inquiry",
etc., 1849, p. 19; and Bacon, "Statistics of the Colored People of
Philadelphia", 1859.]
[Footnote 2: "Statistical Inquiry into the Condition of the Colored
People of Philadelphia", in 1859.]
Situated like those of Philadelphia, the free blacks of New York City
did not have to maintain their own schools. This was especially true
after 1832 when the colored people had qualified themselves to take
over the schools of the New York Manumission Society. They then got
rid of all the white teachers, even Andrews, the principal, who had
for years directed this system. Besides, the economic progress of
certain Negroes there made possible the employment of the increasing
number of colored teachers, who had availed themselves of the
opportunities afforded by the benevolent schools. The stigma then
attached to one receiving seeming charity through free schools
stimulated thrifty Negroes to have their children instructed either in
private institutions kept by friendly white teachers or by teachers of
their own color.[1] In 1812 a society of the free people of color was
organized to raise a fund, the interest of which was to sustain a
free school for orphan children.[2] This society succeeded later in
establishing and maintaining two schools. At this time there were
in New York City three other colored schools, the teachers of which
received their compensation from those who patronized them.[3]
[Footnote 1: See the Address of the American Convention, 1819.]
[Footnote 2: "Proceedings of the Am. Convention", etc., 1812, p. 7.
Certain colored women were then organized to procure and make for
destitute persons of color. See Andrews, "History of the New York
African Free Schools", p. 58.]
[Footnote 3: "Ibid.", p. 58.]
Whether from lack of interest in their welfare on the part of the
public, or from the desire of the Negroes to share their own burdens,
the colored people of Rhode Island were endeavoring to provide for
the education of their children during the first decades of the last
century. "The Newport Mercury" of March 26, 1808, announced that the
African Benevolent Society had opened there a school kept by Newport
Gardner, who was to instruct all colored people "inclined to attend."
The records of the place show that this school was in operation eight
years later.[1]
[Footnote 1: Stockwell, "History of Ed. in R.I.", p. 30.]
In Boston, where were found more Negroes than in most New England
communities, the colored people themselves maintained a separate
school after the revolutionary era. In the towns of Salem, Nantucket,
New Bedford, and Lowell the colored schools failed to make much
progress after the first quarter of the nineteenth century on account
of the more liberal construction of the laws which provided for
democratic education. This the free blacks were forced to advocate for
the reason that the seeming onerous task of supporting a dual system
often caused the neglect, and sometimes the extinction of the separate
schools. Furthermore, either the Negroes of some of these towns were
too scarce or the movement to furnish them special facilities of
education started too late to escape the attacks of the abolitionists.
Seeing their mistake of first establishing separate schools, they
began to attack caste in public education.
In the eastern cities where colored school systems thereafter
continued, the work was not always successful. The influx of fugitives
in the rough sometimes jeopardized their chances for education by
menacing liberal communities with the trouble of caring for an
undesirable class. The friends of the Negroes, however, received more
encouragement during the two decades immediately preceding the Civil
War. There was a change in the attitude of northern cities toward
the uplift of the colored refugees. Catholics, Protestants, and
abolitionists often united their means to make provision for the
education of accessible Negroes, although these friends of the
oppressed could not always agree on other important schemes. Even the
colonizationists, the object of attack from the ardent antislavery
element, considerably aided the cause. They educated for work in
Liberia a number of youths, who, given the opportunity to attend
good schools, demonstrated the capacity of the colored people. More
important factors than the colonizationists were the free people of
color. Brought into the rapidly growing urban communities, these
Negroes began to accumulate sufficient wealth to provide permanent
schools of their own. Many of these were later assimilated by
the systems of northern cities when their separate schools were
disestablished.
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