[Footnote 4: Wigham, The Antislavery Cause in America, p. 103.]
As the colored population of New Jersey was never large, there was not sufficient concentration of such persons in that State to give rise to the problems which at times confronted the benevolent people of Pennsylvania. Great as had been the reaction, the Negroes of New Jersey never entirely lost the privilege of attending school with white students. The New Jersey Constitution of 1844 provided that the funds for the support of the public schools should be applied for the equal benefit of all the people of that State.[1] Considered then entitled to the benefits of this fund, colored pupils were early admitted into the public schools without any social distinction.[2] This does not mean that there were no colored schools in that commonwealth. Negroes in a few settlements like that of Springtown had their own schools.[3] Separate schools were declared illegal by an act of the General Assembly in 1881.
[Footnote 1: Thorpe, Federal and State Constitutions, vol. v., p. 2604.]
[Footnote 2: Southern Workman, vol. xxxvii., p. 390.]
[Footnote 3: Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 400.]
Certain communities of New York provided separate schools for colored pupils rather than admit them to those open to white children. On recommendation of the superintendent of schools in 1823 the State adopted the policy of organizing schools exclusively for colored people.[1] In places where they already existed, the State could aid the establishment as did the New York Common Council in 1824, when it appropriated a portion of its fund to the support of the African Free Schools.[2] In 1841 the New York legislature authorized any district, with the approbation of the school commissioners, to establish a separate school for the colored children in their locality. The superintendent's report for 1847 shows that schools for Negroes had been established in fifteen counties in the State, reporting an enrollment of 5000 pupils. For the maintenance of these schools the sum of $17,000 had been annually expended. Colored pupils were enumerated by the trustees in their annual reports, drew public money for the district in which they resided, and were equally entitled with white children to the benefit of the school fund. In the rural districts colored children were generally admitted to the common schools. Wherever race prejudice, however, was sufficiently violent to exclude them from the village school, the trustees were empowered to use the Negroes' share of the public money to provide for their education elsewhere. At the same time indigent Negroes were to be exempted from the payment of the "rate bill" which fell as a charge upon the other citizens of the district.[3]
[Footnote 1: Randall, Hist. of Common School System of New York, p. 24.]
[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 48.]
[Footnote 3: Randall, Hist. of Common School System of New York, p. 248.]
Some trouble had arisen from making special appropriations for incorporated villages. Such appropriations, the superintendent had observed, excited prejudice and parsimony; for the trustees of some villages had learned to expend only the special appropriations for the education of the colored pupils, and to use the public money in establishing and maintaining schools for the white children. He believed that it was wrong to argue that Negroes were any more a burden to incorporated villages than to cities or rural districts, and that they were, therefore, entitled to every allowance of money to educate them.[1]