The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861: A History of the Education of the Colored People of the United States from the Beginning of Slavery to the Civil WarWoodson, Carter Godwin
History
The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861: A History of the Education of the Colored People of the United States from the Beginning of Slavery to the Civil War
Woodson, Carter Godwin
African Americans -- Education
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.]
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