Part 9 (1/2)

[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 roes around Philadelphia was checked a little by the ration 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 see development, the friends of the race toiled on as before In 1810 certain Quaker woirls in 1795 apparently succeeded[2] The institution, however, did not last many years But the Clarkson Hall schools ress that the ement 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 asserted without fear of contradiction that the pupils of that seminary would sustain a fair comparison with those of any other institution in which the saht In 1815 these schools were offering free instruction to three hundred boys and girls, and to a nu 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 Colus 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 assistance 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 association 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 classes 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 ti 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 attitude toward her Negroes We have already observed how Banneker, though living in a small place, was permitted to attend school, and how Ellicott becaenius and furnished hi the saates 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 theht fro 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 etown and Balti the colored people, the influence of the revolutionary movee 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 etown made it, by the time of its incorporation into the District of Colu 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 hite boys and girls who seemed to raise no objection[2] Later in the nineteenth century the efforts roes 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 US Com of Ed_, pp 195 _et seq_, and pp 352-353]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid_, p 353]

Having a nu the various sects buoyant with religious freedoinia 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, so 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 whoible hand,” ”read the Scriptures with tolerable facility,” and had coht others had learned to read, but hadhis less progressive pupils fifteen could spell words of three or four syllables and read easy lessons, soed in learning the alphabet and spelling nificant 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 institutions of learning, which so 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 US Com of Ed_, 1871, p 198]

Schools for the education of Negroes were established in Richenation of the races in these cities had given rise to a very intelligent class of slaves and a considerable number of thrifty free persons of color, in whom the best people early learned to show anized for them in the central part of the commonwealth, those about Richinia, reporting for that city in 1798, said that considerable progress had been made in the education of the blacks, and that they contemplated the establishroes 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 ehts of colored people even in the violation of the laws of the State” For this reason the coh they could not but unite in the opinion with the American Convention of Abolition Societies as to the i as freed spirit of power and usurpation”[3] to direct attention to the Negroes'

bodily comfort