The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861 Part 9

[Footnote 4: _Statistical Inquiry into the Condition of the Colored People of Philadelphia_, p. 19.]

[Footnote 5: _Ibid_., p. 20.]

After the first decade of the nineteenth century the movement for the uplift of the Negroes around Philadelphia was checked a little by the migration to that city of many freedmen who had been lately liberated.

The majority of them did not "exhibit that industry, economy, and temperance" which were "expected by many and wished by all."[1] Not deterred, however, by this seemingly discouraging development, the friends of the race toiled on as before. In 1810 certain Quaker women who had attempted to establish a school for colored girls in 1795 apparently succeeded.[2] The inst.i.tution, however, did not last many years. But the Clarkson Hall schools maintained by the Abolition Society were then making such progress that the management was satisfied that they furnished a decided refutation of the charge that the "mental endowments of the descendants of the African race are inferior to those possessed by their white brethren."[3] They a.s.serted without fear of contradiction that the pupils of that seminary would sustain a fair comparison with those of any other inst.i.tution in which the same elementary branches were taught. In 1815 these schools were offering free instruction to three hundred boys and girls, and to a number of adults attending evening schools. These victories had been achieved despite the fact that in regard to some of the objects of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade "a tide of prejudice, popular and legislative, set strongly against them."[4] After 1818, however, help was obtained from the State to educate the colored children of Columbia and Philadelphia.

[Footnote 1: _Proceedings of the American Conv_., 1809, p. 16, and 1812, p. 16.]

[Footnote 2: Wickersham, _History of Ed. in Pa_., p. 252.]

[Footnote 3: _Proceedings of the American Convention_, etc., 1812, Report from Philadelphia.]

[Footnote 4: _Ibid_., 1815, Report from Phila.]

The a.s.sistance obtained from the State, however, was not taken as a pretext for the cessation of the labors on the part of those who had borne the burden for more than a century. The faithful friends of the colored race remained as active as ever. In 1822 the Quakers in the Northern Liberties organized the Female a.s.sociation which maintained one or more schools.[1] That same year the Union Society founded in 1810 for the support of schools and domestic manufactures for the benefit of the "African race and people of color" was conducting three schools for adults.[2] The Infant School Society of Philadelphia was also doing good work in looking after the education of small colored children.[3] In the course of time crowded conditions in the colored schools necessitated the opening of additional evening cla.s.ses and the erection of larger buildings.

[Footnote 1: Wickersham, _History of Education in Pa._, p. 252.]

[Footnote 2: One of these was at the Sessions House of the Third Presbyterian Church; one at Clarkston Schoolhouse, Cherry Street; one in the Academy on Locust Street. See _Statistical Inquiry into the Condition of the Colored People of Philadelphia_, p. 19; and Wickersham, _Education in Pa._, p. 253.]

[Footnote 3: _Statistical Inquiry_, etc., p. 19.]

At this time Maryland was not raising any serious objection to the instruction of slaves, and public sentiment there did not seem to interfere with the education of free persons of color. Maryland was long noted for her favorable att.i.tude toward her Negroes. We have already observed how Banneker, though living in a small place, was permitted to attend school, and how Ellicott became interested in this man of genius and furnished him with books. Other Negroes of that State were enjoying the same privilege. The abolition delegates from Maryland reported in 1797 that several children of the Africans and other people of color were under a course of instruction, and that an academy and qualified teachers for them would be provided.[1] These Negroes were then getting light from another source. Having more freedom in this State than in some others, the Quakers were allowed to teach colored people.

[Footnote 1: _Proceedings of the American Convention_, etc., 1797, p.

16.]

Most interest in the cause in Maryland was manifested near the cities of Georgetown and Baltimore.[1] Long active in the cause of elevating the colored people, the influence of the revolutionary movement was hardly necessary to arouse the Catholics to discharge their duty of enlightening the blacks. Wherever they had the opportunity to give slaves religious instruction, they generally taught the unfortunates everything that would broaden their horizon and help them to understand life. The abolitionists and Protestant churches were also in the field, but the work of the early fathers in these cities was more effective. These forces at work in Georgetown made it, by the time of its incorporation into the District of Columbia, a center sending out teachers to carry on the instruction of Negroes. So liberal were the white people of this town that colored children were sent to school there with white boys and girls who seemed to raise no objection.[2] Later in the nineteenth century the efforts made to educate the Negroes of the rural districts of Maryland were eclipsed by the better work accomplished by the free blacks in Baltimore and the District of Columbia.

[Footnote 1: _Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed_., pp. 195 _et seq_., and pp. 352-353.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid_., p. 353.]

Having a number of antislavery men among the various sects buoyant with religious freedom, Virginia easily continued to look with favor upon the uplift of the colored people. The records of the Quakers of that day show special effort in this direction there about 1764, 1773, and 1785. In 1797 the abolitionists of Alexandria, some of whom were Quakers, had been doing effective work among the Negroes of that section. They had established a school with one Benjamin Davis as a teacher. He reported an attendance of one hundred and eight pupils, four of whom "could write a very legible hand," "read the Scriptures with tolerable facility," and had commenced arithmetic. Eight others had learned to read, but had made very little progress in writing.

Among his less progressive pupils fifteen could spell words of three or four syllables and read easy lessons, some had begun to write, while the others were chiefly engaged in learning the alphabet and spelling monosyllables.[1] It is significant that colored children of Alexandria, just as in the case of Georgetown, attended schools established for the whites.[2] Their coeducation extended not only to Sabbath schools but to other inst.i.tutions of learning, which some Negroes attended during the week.[3] Mrs. Maria Hall, one of the early teachers of the District of Columbia, obtained her education in a mixed school of Alexandria.[4] Controlled then by aristocratic people who did not neglect the people of color, Alexandria also became a sort of center for the uplift of the blacks in Northern Virginia.

[Footnote 1: _Proceedings of the Am. Conv_., etc., 1797, p. 35.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid_., 1797, p. 36.]

[Footnote 3: _Proceedings of the Am. Conv._, p. 17; _ibid._, 1827, p.

53.]

[Footnote 4: _Special Report of U.S. Com. of Ed._, 1871, p. 198.]

Schools for the education of Negroes were established in Richmond, Petersburg, and Norfolk. An extensive miscegenation of the races in these cities had given rise to a very intelligent cla.s.s of slaves and a considerable number of thrifty free persons of color, in whom the best people early learned to show much interest.[1] Of the schools organized for them in the central part of the commonwealth, those about Richmond seemed to be less prosperous. The abolitionists of Virginia, reporting for that city in 1798, said that considerable progress had been made in the education of the blacks, and that they contemplated the establishment of a school for the instruction of Negroes and other persons. They were apprehensive, however, that their funds would be scarcely sufficient for this purpose.[2] In 1801, one year after Gabriel's Insurrection, the abolitionists of Richmond reported that the cause had been hindered by the "rapacious disposition which emboldened many tyrants" among them "to trample upon the rights of colored people even in the violation of the laws of the State." For this reason the complainants felt that, although they could not but unite in the opinion with the American Convention of Abolition Societies as to the importance of educating the slaves for living as freedmen, they were compelled on account of a "domineering spirit of power and usurpation"[3] to direct attention to the Negroes'

bodily comfort.

[Footnote 1: _Ibid._, p. 393.]

[Footnote 2: _Proceedings of the Am. Conv._, etc., 1798, p. 16.]

[Footnote 3: _Proceedings of the Am. Conv_., 1801, p. 15.]

This situation, however, was not sufficiently alarming to deter all the promoters of Negro education in Virginia. It is remarkable how Robert Pleasants, a Quaker of that State who emanc.i.p.ated his slaves at his death in 1801, had united with other members of his sect to establish a school for colored people. In 1782 they circulated a pamphlet ent.i.tled "Proposals for Establis.h.i.+ng a Free School for the Instruction of Children of Blacks and People of Color."[1] They recommended to the humane and benevolent of all denominations cheerfully to contribute to an inst.i.tution "calculated to promote the spiritual and temporal interests of that unfortunate part of our fellow creatures in forming their minds in the principles of virtue and religion, and in common or useful literature, writing, ciphering, and mechanic arts, as the most likely means to render so numerous a people fit for freedom, and to become useful citizens." Pleasants proposed to establish a school on a three-hundred-and-fifty-acre tract of his own land at Gravelly Hills near Four-Mile Creek, Henrico County. The whole revenue of the land was to go toward the support of the inst.i.tution, or, in the event the school should be established elsewhere, he would give it one hundred pounds. Ebenezer Maule, another friend, subscribed fifty pounds for the same purpose.[2]

Exactly what the outcome was, no one knows; but the memorial on the life of Pleasants shows that he appropriated the rent of the three-hundred-and-fifty-acre tract and ten pounds per annum to the establishment of a free school for Negroes, and that a few years after his death such an inst.i.tution was in operation under a Friend at Gravelly Run.[3]

[Footnote 1: Weeks, _Southern Quakers_, p. 215.]

[Footnote 2: Weeks, _Southern Quakers_, p. 216.]

[Footnote 3: _Ibid_., p. 216.]

Such philanthropy, however, did not become general in Virginia. The progress of Negro education there was decidedly checked by the rapid development of discontent among Negroes ambitious to emulate the example of Toussaint L'Ouverture. During the first quarter of the nineteenth century that commonwealth tolerated much less enlightenment of the colored people than the benevolent element allowed them in the other border States. The custom of teaching colored pauper children apprenticed by church-wardens was prohibited by statute immediately after Gabriel's Insurrection in 1800.[1] Negroes eager to learn were thereafter largely restricted to private tutoring and instruction offered in Sabbath-schools. Furthermore, as Virginia developed few urban communities there were not sufficient persons of color in any one place to cooperate in enlightening themselves even as much as public sentiment allowed. After 1838 Virginia Negroes had practically no chance to educate themselves.

[Footnote 1: Hening, _Statutes at Large_, vol. xvi., p. 124.]

North Carolina, not unlike the border States in their good treatment of free persons of color, placed such little restriction on the improvement of the colored people that they early attained rank among the most enlightened ante-bellum Negroes. This interest, largely on account of the zeal of the antislavery leaders and Quakers,[1]

continued unabated from 1780, the time of their greatest activity, to the period of the intense abolition agitation and the servile insurrections. In 1815 the Quakers were still exhorting their members to establish schools for the literary and religious instruction of Negroes.[2] The following year a school for Negroes was opened for two days in a week.[3] So successful was the work done by the Quakers during this period that they could report in 1817 that most colored minors in the Western Quarter had been "put in a way to get a portion of school learning."[4] In 1819 some of them could spell and a few could write. The plan of these workers was to extend the instruction until males could "read, write, and cipher," and until the females could "read and write."[5]

[Footnote 1: Weeks, _Southern Quakers_, p. 231; Levi Coffin, _Reminiscences_, pp. 69-71; Ba.s.sett, _Slavery in North Carolina_, p.

66.]

[Footnote 2: Weeks, _Southern Quakers_, p. 232.]

[Footnote 3: Thwaites, _Early Travels_, vol. ii., p. 66.]

[Footnote 4: Weeks, _Southern Quakers_, p. 232.]

[Footnote 5: _Ibid_., 232.]

In the course of time, however, these philanthropists met with some discouragement. In 1821 certain masters were sending their slaves to a Sunday-school opened by Levi Coffin and his son Vestal. Before the slaves had learned more than to spell words of two or three syllables other masters became unduly alarmed, thinking that such instruction would make the slaves discontented.[1] The timorous element threatened the teachers with the terrors of the law, induced the benevolent slaveholders to prohibit the attendance of their Negroes, and had the school closed.[2] Moreover, it became more difficult to obtain aid for this cause. Between 1815 and 1825 the North Carolina Manumission Societies were redoubling their efforts to raise funds for this purpose. By 1819 they had collected $47.00 but had not increased this amount more than $2.62 two years later.[3]

[Footnote 1: Coffin, _Reminiscences_, p. 69.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid_., p. 70.]

[Footnote 3: Weeks, _Southern Quakers_, p. 241.]

The work done by the various workers in North Carolina did not affect the general improvement of the slaves, but thanks to the humanitarian movement, they were not entirely neglected. In 1830 the General a.s.sociation of the Manumission Societies of that commonwealth complained that the laws made no provision for the moral improvement of the slaves.[1] Though learning was in a very small degree diffused among the colored people of a few sections, it was almost unknown to the slaves. They pointed out, too, that the little instruction some of the slaves had received, and by which a few had been taught to spell, or perhaps to read in "easy places," was not due to any legal provision, but solely to the charity "which endureth all things" and is willing to suffer reproach for the sake of being instrumental in "delivering the poor that cry" and "directing the wanderer in the right way."[2] To ameliorate these conditions the a.s.sociation recommended among other things the enactment of a law providing for the instruction of slaves in the elementary principles of language at least so far as to enable them to read the Holy Scriptures.[3] The reaction culminated, however, before this plan could be properly presented to the people of that commonwealth.

[Footnote 1: An Address to the People of North Carolina on the Evils of Slavery by the Friends of Liberty and Equality, _pa.s.sim_.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid._]

[Footnote 3: _Ibid._]

During these years an exceptionally bright Negro was serving as a teacher not of his own race but of the most aristocratic white people of North Carolina. This educator was a freeman named John Chavis. He was born probably near Oxford, Granville County, about 1763. Chavis was a full-blooded Negro of dark brown color. Early attracting the attention of his white neighbors, he was sent to Princeton "to see if a Negro would take a collegiate education." His rapid advancement under Dr. Witherspoon "soon convinced his friends that the experiment would issue favorable."[1] There he took rank as a good Latin and a fair Greek scholar.