The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861 Part 25

[Footnote 5: A North Carolina Negro had discovered a cure for snakebite; Henry Blair, a slave of Maryland, had invented a corn-planter; and Roberts of Philadelphia had made a machine for lifting railway cars from the tracks.]

[Footnote 6: The most noted of these lawyers were Robert Morris, Malcolm B. Allen, G.B. Vashon, and E.G. Walker.]

[Footnote 7: The leading Negroes of this cla.s.s were T. Joiner White, Peter Ray, John DeGra.s.se, David P. Jones, J. Gould Bias, James Ulett, Martin Delany, and John R. Peck. James McCrummill, Joseph Wilson, Thos. Kennard, and Wm. Nickless were noted colored dentists of Philadelphia.]

[Footnote 8: The prominent colored preachers of that day were t.i.tus Basfield, B.F. Templeton, W.T. Catto, Benjamin c.o.ker, John B. Vashon, Robert Purvis, David Ruggles, Philip A. Bell, Charles L. Reason, William Wells Brown, Samuel L. Ward, James McCune Smith, Highland Garnett, Daniel A. Payne, James C. Pennington, M. Haines, and John F.

Cook.]

[Footnote 9: Baldwin, _Observations_, etc., p. 44.]

Thanks to the open doors of liberal schools, the race could boast of a number of efficient educators.[1] There were Martin H. Freeman, John Newton Templeton, Mary E. Miles, Lucy Stratton, Lewis Woodson, John F. Cook, Mary Ann Shadd, W.H. Allen, and B.W. Arnett. Professor C.L.

Reason, a veteran teacher of New York City, was then so well educated that in 1844 he was called to the professors.h.i.+p of Belles-Lettres and the French Language in New York Central College. Many intelligent Negroes who followed other occupations had teaching for their avocation. In fact almost every colored person who could read and write was a missionary teacher among his people.

[Footnote 1: James B. Russworm, an alumnus of Bowdoin, was the first Negro to receive a degree from a college in this country.]

In music, literature, and journalism the Negroes were also doing well.

Eliza Greenfield, William Jackson, John G. Anderson, and William Appo made their way in the musical world. Lemuel Haynes, a successful preacher to a white congregation, took up theology about 1815. Paul Cuffee wrote an interesting account of Sierra Leone. Rev. Daniel c.o.ker published a book on slavery in 1810. Seven years later came the publication of the _Law and Doctrine of the African Methodist Episcopal Church_ and the _Standard Hymnal_ written by Richard Allen.

In 1836 Rev. George Hogarth published an addition to this volume and in 1841 brought forward the first magazine of the sect. Edward W.

Moore, a colored teacher of white children in Tennessee, wrote an arithmetic. C.L. Remond of Ma.s.sachusetts was then a successful lecturer and controversialist. James M. Whitefield, George Horton, and Frances E.W. Harper were publis.h.i.+ng poems. H.H. Garnett and J.C.

Pennington, known to fame as preachers, attained success also as pamphleteers. R.B. Lewis, M.R. Delany, William Nell, and Catto embellished Negro history; William Wells Brown wrote his _Three Years in Europe_; and Frederick Dougla.s.s, the orator, gave the world his creditable autobiography. More effective still were the journalistic efforts of the Negro intellect pleading its own cause. [1] Colored newspapers varying from the type of weeklies like _The North Star_ to that of the modern magazine like _The Anglo-African_ were published in most large towns and cities of the North.

[Footnote 1: In 1827 John B. Russworm and Samuel B. Cornish began the publication of _The Freedom's Journal_, appearing afterward as _Rights to All_. Ten years later P.A. Bell was publis.h.i.+ng _The Weekly Advocate_. From 1837 to 1842 Bell and Cornish edited _The Colored Man's Journal_, while Samuel Ruggles sent from his press _The Mirror of Liberty_. In 1847, one year after the appearance of Thomas Van Rensselaer's _Ram's Horn_, Frederick Dougla.s.s started _The North Star_ at Rochester, while G. Allen and Highland Garnett were appealing to the country through _The National Watchman_ of Troy, New York. That same year Martin R. Delany brought out _The Pittsburg Mystery_, and others _The Elevator_ at Albany, New York. At Syracuse appeared The _Impartial Citizen_ established by Samuel R. Ward in 1848, three years after which L.H. Putnam came before the public in New York City with _The Colored Man's Journal_. Then came _The Philadelphia Freeman_, _The Philadelphia Citizen_, _The New York Phalanx_, _The Baltimore Elevator_, and _The Cincinnati Central Star_. Of a higher order was _he Anglo-African_, a magazine published in New York in 1859 by Thomas Hamilton, who was succeeded in editors.h.i.+p by Robert Hamilton and Highland Garnett. In 1852 there were in existence _The Colored American_, _The Struggler_, _The Watchman_, _The Ram's Horn_, _The Demosthenian s.h.i.+eld_, _The National Reformer_, _The Pittsburg Mystery_, _The Palladium of Liberty_, _The Disfranchised American_, _The Colored Citizen_, _The National Watchman_, _The Excelsior_, _The Christian Herald_, _The Farmer_, _The Impartial Citizen_, _The Northern Star_ of Albany, and The _North Star_ of Rochester.]

CHAPTER XII

VOCATIONAL TRAINING

Having before them striking examples of highly educated colored men who could find no employment in the United States, the free Negroes began to realize that their preparation was not going hand in hand with their opportunities. Industrial education was then emphasized as the proper method of equipping the race for usefulness. The advocacy of such training, however, was in no sense new. The early anti-slavery men regarded it as the prerequisite to emanc.i.p.ation, and the abolitionists urged it as the only safe means of elevating the freedmen. But when the blacks, converted to this doctrine, began to enter the higher pursuits of labor during the forties and fifties, there started a struggle which has been prolonged even into our day.

Most northern white men had ceased to oppose the enlightenment of the free people of color but still objected to granting them economic equality. The same investigators that discovered increased facilities of conventional education for Negroes in 1834 reported also that there existed among the white mechanics a formidable prejudice against colored artisans.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Minutes of the Fourth Annual Convention for the Improvement of the Free People of Color_, p. 26.]

In opposing the encroachment of Negroes on their field of labor the northerners took their cue from the white mechanics in the South. At first laborers of both races worked together in the same room and at the same machine.[1] But in the nineteenth century, when more white men in the South were condescending to do skilled labor and trying to develop manufactures, they found themselves handicapped by compet.i.tion with the slave mechanics. Before 1860 most southern mechanics, machinists, local manufacturers, contractors, and railroad men with the exception of conductors were Negroes.[2] Against this custom of making colored men such an economic factor the white mechanics frequently protested.[3] The riots against Negroes occurring in Cincinnati, Philadelphia, New York, and Was.h.i.+ngton during the thirties and forties owed their origin mainly to an ill feeling between the white and colored skilled laborers.[4] The white artisans prevailed upon the legislatures of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Georgia to enact measures hostile to their rivals.[5] In 1845 the State of Georgia made it a misdemeanor for a colored mechanic to make a contract for the repair or the erection of buildings.[6] The people of Georgia, however, were not unanimously in favor of keeping the Negro artisan down. We have already observed that at the request of the Agricultural Convention of that State in 1852 the legislature all but pa.s.sed a bill providing for the education of slaves to increase their efficiency and attach them to their masters.[7]

[Footnote 1: Buckingham, _Slave States of America_, vol. ii., p. 112.]

[Footnote 2: Du Bois and Dill, _The Negro American Artisan_, p. 36.]

[Footnote 3: Du Bois and Dill, _The Negro American Artisan_, pp. 31, 32, 33.]

[Footnote 4: Du Bois and Dill, _The Negro American Artisan_, p. 34, and _Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed._, 1871, p. 365.]

[Footnote 5: Du Bois and Dill, _The Negro American Artisan_, pp. 31, 32.]

[Footnote 6: Du Bois and Dill, _The Negro American Artisan_, p. 32.]

[Footnote 7: _Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed._, 1871, p. 339.]

It was unfortunate that the free people of color in the North had not taken up vocational training earlier in the century before the laboring cla.s.ses realized fraternal consciousness. Once pitted against the capitalists during the Administration of Andrew Jackson the working cla.s.ses learned to think that their interests differed materially from those of the rich, whose privileges had multiplied at the expense of the poor. Efforts toward effecting organizations to secure to labor adequate protection began to be successful during Van Buren's Administration. At this time some reformers were boldly demanding the recognition of Negroes by all helpful groups. One of the tests of the strength of these protagonists was whether or not they could induce the mechanics of the North to take colored workmen to supply the skilled laborers required by the then rapid economic development of our free States. Would the whites permit the blacks to continue as their compet.i.tors after labor had been elevated above drudgery? To do this meant the continuation of the custom of taking youths of African blood as apprentices. This the white mechanics of the North generally refused to do.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Minutes of the Third Annual Convention of the Free People of Color_, p. 18.]

The friends of the colored race, however, were not easily discouraged by that "vulgar race prejudice which reigns in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of working cla.s.ses."[1] Arthur Tappan, Gerrit Smith, and William Lloyd Garrison made the appeal in behalf of the untrained laborers.[2] Although they knew the difficulties encountered by Negroes seeking to learn trades, and could daily observe how unwilling master mechanics were to receive colored boys as apprentices, the abolitionists persisted in saying that by perseverance these youths could succeed in procuring profitable situations.[3] Garrison believed that their failure to find employment at trades was not due so much to racial differences as to their lack of training. Speaking to the free people of color in their convention in Philadelphia in 1831, he could give them no better advice than that "wherever you can, put your children to trades. A good trade is better than a fortune, because when once obtained it cannot be taken away." Discussing the matter further, he said: "Now, there can be no reason why your sons should fail to make as ingenious and industrious mechanics, as any white apprentices; and when they once get trades, they will be able to acc.u.mulate money; money begets influence, and influence respectability. Influence, wealth, and character will certainly destroy those prejudices which now separate you from society."[4]

[Footnote 1: _Minutes of the Fourth Annual Convention for the Improvement of the Free People of Color_, p. 26.]

[Footnote 2: This statement is based on articles appearing in _The Liberator_ from time to time.]

[Footnote 3: _Minutes of the Second Annual Convention for the Improvement of the Free People of Color_, 1831, p. 10.]

[Footnote 4: _Minutes of the Second Annual Convention for the Improvement of the Free People of Color_, 1831, p. II.]

To expect the cooperation of the white working cla.s.ses in thus elevating the colored race turned out to be a delusion. They reached the conclusion that in making their headway against capital they had a better chance without Negroes than with them. White mechanics of the North not only refused to accept colored boys as apprentices, but would not even work for employers who persisted in hiring Negroes.

Generally refused by the master mechanics of Cincinnati, a colored cabinet-maker finally found an Englishman who was willing to hire him, but the employees of the shop objected, refusing to allow the newcomer even to work in a room by himself.[1] A Negro who could preach in a white church of the North would have had difficulty in securing the contract to build a new edifice for that congregation. A colored man could then more easily get his son into a lawyer's office to learn law than he could "into a blacksmith shop to blow the bellows and wield the sledge hammer."[2]

[Footnote 1: _The Liberator_, June 13, 1835.]

[Footnote 2: Dougla.s.s, _Narrative of the Life of Frederick Dougla.s.s_, p. 248.]

Left then in a quandary as to what they should do, northern Negroes hoped to use the then popular "manual labor schools" to furnish the facilities for both practical and cla.s.sical education. These schools as operated for the whites, however, were not primarily trade schools.

Those which admitted persons of African descent paid more attention to actual industrial training for the reason that colored students could not then hope to acquire such knowledge as apprentices. This tendency was well shown by the action of the free Negroes through their delegates in the convention a.s.sembled in Philadelphia in 1830.

Conversant with the policy of so reshaping the educational system of the country as to carry knowledge even to the hovels, these leaders were easily won to the scheme of reconstructing their schools "on the manual labor system." In this they saw the redemption of the free Negroes of the North. These gentlemen were afraid that the colored people were not paying sufficient attention to the development of the power to use their hands skillfully.[1] One of the first acts of the convention was to inquire as to how fast colored men were becoming attached to mechanical pursuits,[2] and whether or not there was any prospect that a manual labor school for the instruction of the youth would shortly be established. The report of the committee, to which the question was referred, was so encouraging that the convention itself decided to establish an inst.i.tution of the kind at New Haven, Connecticut. They appealed to their fellows for help, called the attention of philanthropists to this need of the race, and commissioned William Lloyd Garrison to solicit funds in Great Britain.[3] Garrison found hearty supporters among the friends of freedom in that country. Some, who had been induced to contribute to the Colonization Society, found it more advisable to aid the new movement. Charles Stewart of Liverpool wrote Garrison that he could count on his British co-workers to raise $1000 for this purpose.[4] At the same time Americans were equally active. Arthur Tappan subscribed $1000 on the condition that each of nineteen other persons should contribute the same amount.[5]

[Footnote 1: _Minutes of the Fourth Annual Convention for the Improvement of the Free People of Color_, p. 26; and _The Liberator_, October 22, 1831; and _The Abolitionist_, November, 1833 (p. 191).]

[Footnote 2: _Minutes of the Fourth Annual Convention for the Improvement of the Free People of Color_, p. 27.]

[Footnote 3: _Minutes of the Third Annual Convention for the Improvement of the Free People of Color_, p. 34.]

[Footnote 4: _The Abolitionist_ (November 1833), p. 191.]

[Footnote 5: _The Liberator_, October 22, 1831.]

Before these well-laid plans could mature, however, unexpected opposition developed in New Haven. Indignation meetings were held, protests against this project were filed, and the free people of color were notified that the inst.i.tution was not desired in Connecticut.[1]

It was said that these memorialists feared that a colored college so near to Yale might cause friction between the two student bodies, and that the school might attract an unusually large number of undesirable Negroes. At their meeting the citizens of New Haven resolved "That the founding of colleges for educating colored people is an unwarrantable and dangerous undertaking to the internal concerns of other states and ought to be discouraged, and that the mayor, aldermen, common council, and freemen will resist the movement by every lawful means."[2] In view of such drastic action the promoters had to abandon their plan.

No such protests were made by the citizens of New Haven, however, when the colonizationists were planning to establish there a mission school to prepare Negroes to leave the country.

[Footnote 1: Monroe, _Cyclopaedia of Education_, vol. iv., p. 406.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, vol. iv., p. 406; and _The Liberator_, July 9, 1831.]

The movement, however, was not then stopped by this outburst of race prejudice in New Haven. Directing attention to another community, the New England Antislavery Society took up this scheme and collected funds to establish a manual labor school. When the officials had on hand about $1000 it was discovered that they could accomplish their aim by subsidizing the Noyes Academy of Canaan, New Hamps.h.i.+re, and making such changes as were necessary to subserve the purposes intended.[1] The plan was not to convert this into a colored school.

The promoters hoped to maintain there a model academy for the co-education of the races "on the manual labor system." The treasurer of the Antislavery Society was to turn over certain moneys to this academy to provide for the needs of the colored students, who then numbered fourteen of the fifty-two enrolled. But although it had been reported that the people of the town were in accord with the princ.i.p.al's acceptance of this proposition, there were soon evidences to the contrary. Fearing imaginary evils, these modern Canaanites destroyed the academy, dragging the building to a swamp with a hundred yoke of oxen.[2] The better element of the town registered against this outrage only a slight protest. H.H. Garnett and Alexander Crummell were among the colored students who sought education at this academy.

[Footnote 1: _The Liberator_, July 4, 1835.]