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

by Carter Godwin Woodson

Judge of Superior Court, Balt., Md.

African Repository, vol. xxxiv., pp. 26 and 27.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

There is no helpful bibliography on the early education of the American Negro. A few books treating the recent problems of education in this country give facts about the enlightenment of the colored people before their general emancipation, but the investigator has to depend on promiscuous sources for adequate information of this kind. With the exception of a survey of the Legal Status of the Colored Population in Respect to Schools and Education in the Different States, published in the Report of the United States Commissioner of Education in 1871, there has been no attempt at a general treatment of this phase of our history. This treatise, however, is too brief to inculcate an appreciation of the extensive efforts to enlighten the ante-bellum Negro.

Considered as a local problem this question has received more attention. A few writers have undertaken to sketch the movement to educate the colored people of certain communities before the Civil War. Their objective point, however, has been rather to treat of later periods. The books mentioned below give some information with respect to the period treated in this monograph.

BOOKS ON EDUCATION

Andrews, C.C. The history of the New York African Free Schools from their Establishment in 1787 to the Present Time. (New York, 1830.) Embraces a period of more than forty years, also a brief account of the successful labors of the New York Manumission Society, with an appendix containing specimens of original composition, both in prose and verse, by several of the pupils; pieces spoken at public examinations; an interesting dialogue between Doctor Samuel L. Mitchell, of New York, and a little boy of ten years old, and lines illustrative of the Lancastrian system of instruction. Andrews was a white man who was for a long time the head of this colored school system.

Boese, Thomas. Public Education in the City of New York, Its History,
Condition, and Statistics, an Official Report of the Board of
Education. (New York, 1869.) While serving as clerk of the Board of
Education Boese had an opportunity to learn much about the New York
African Free Schools.

Boone, R.G. A History of Education in Indiana. (New York, 1892.) Contains a brief account of the work of the Abolitionists in behalf of the education of the Negroes of that commonwealth.

BUTLER, N.M. Education in the United States. A series of monographs.
(New York, 1910.)