HIGHER EDUCATION
The development of the schools and churches established for these transplanted freedmen made more necessary than ever a higher education to develop in them the power to work out their own salvation. It was again the day of thorough training for the Negroes. Their opportunities for better instruction were offered mainly by the colonizationists and abolitionists.[1] Although these workers had radically different views as to the manner of elevating the colored people, they contributed much to their mental development. The more liberal colonizationists endeavored to furnish free persons of color the facilities for higher education with the hope that their enlightenment would make them so discontented with this country that they would emigrate to Liberia. Most southern colonizationists accepted this plan but felt that those permanently attached to this country should be kept in ignorance; for if they were enlightened, they would either be freed or exterminated. During the period of reaction, when the elevation of the race was discouraged in the North and prohibited in most parts of the South, the colonizationists continued to secure to Negroes, desiring to expatriate themselves, opportunities for education which never would have been given those expecting to remain in the United States.[2]
[Footnote 1: The views of the abolitionists at that time were well expressed by Garrison in his address to the people of color in the convention assembled in Philadelphia in 1830. He encouraged them to get as much education as possible for themselves and their offspring, to toil long and hard for it as for a pearl of great price. "An ignorant people," said he, "can never occupy any other than a degraded place in society; they can never be truly free until they are intelligent. It is an old maxim that knowledge is power; and not only is it power but rank, wealth, dignity, and protection. That capital brings highest return to a city, state, or nation (as the case may be) which is invested in schools, academies, and colleges. If I had children, rather than that they should grow up in ignorance, I would feed upon bread and water: I would sell my teeth, or extract the blood from my veins." See Minutes of the Proceedings of the Convention for the Improvement of the Free People of Color, 1830, pages 10, 11.]
[Footnote 2: Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed., 1871, pp. 213-214; and The African Repository, under the captions of "Education in Liberia," and "African Education Societies," passim.]
The policy of promoters of African colonization, however, did not immediately become unprogressive. Their plan of education differed from previous efforts in that the objects of their philanthropy were to be given every opportunity for mental growth. The colonizationists had learned from experience in educating Negroes that it was necessary to begin with the youth.[1] These workers observed, too, that the exigencies of the time demanded more advanced and better endowed institutions to prepare colored men to instruct others in science and religion, and to fit them for "civil offices in Liberia and Hayti."[2] To execute this scheme the leaders of the colonization movement endeavored to educate Negroes in "mechanic arts, agriculture, science, and Biblical literature."[3] Exceptionally bright youths were to be given special training as catechists, teachers, preachers, and physicians.[4] A southern planter offered a plantation for the establishment of a suitable institution of learning,[5] a few masters sent their slaves to eastern schools to be educated, and men organized "education societies" in various parts to carry out this work at shorter range. In 1817 colonizationists opened at Pasippany, New Jersey, a school to give a four-year course to "African youth" who showed "talent, discretion, and piety" and were able to read and write.[6] Twelve years later another effort was made to establish a school of this kind at Newark in that State,[7] while other promoters of that faith were endeavoring to establish a similar institution at Hartford, Connecticut,[8] all hoping to make use of the Kosciuszko fund.[9]
[Footnote 1: African Repository, vol. i., p. 277.]
[Footnote 2: African Repository, vol. ii., p. 223.]
[Footnote 3: Ibid., vol. xxviii., pp. 271, 347; Child, An Appeal, p. 144.]
[Footnote 4: African Repository, vol. i., p. 277.]
[Footnote 5: Report of the Proceedings at the Organization of the
African Education Society, p. 9.]