[Footnote 1: Special Report of U.S. Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 357.]
[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 357.]
[Footnote 3: Next to be instructor of this institution was Prince Saunders, who was brought to Boston by Dr. Channing and Caleb Bingham in 1809. Brought up in the family of a Vermont lawyer, and experienced as a diplomatic official of Emperor Christopher of Hayti, Prince Saunders was able to do much for the advancement of this work. Among others who taught in this school was John B. Russworm, a graduate of Bowdoin College, and, later, Governor of the Colony of Cape Palmas in Southern Liberia. See Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 357; and African Repository, vol. ii., p. 271.]
[Footnote 4: Special Rep. of the U.S. Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 357.]
Generally speaking, we can say that while the movement for special colored schools met with some opposition in certain portions of New England, in other parts of the Northeastern States the religious organizations and abolition societies, which were espousing the cause of the Negro, yielded to this demand. These schools were sometimes found in churches of the North, as in the cases of the schools in the African Church of Boston, and the Sunday-school in the African Improved Church of New Haven. In 1828 there was in that city another such school supported by public-school money; three in Boston; one in Salem; and one in Portland, Maine.[1]
[Footnote 1: Adams, Anti-slavery, p. 142.]
Outside of the city of New York, not so much interest was shown in the education of Negroes as in the States which had a larger colored population.[1] Those who were scattered through the State were allowed to attend white schools, which did not "meet their special needs."[2] In the metropolis, where the blacks constituted one-tenth of the inhabitants in 1800, however, the mental improvement of the dark race could not be neglected. The liberalism of the revolutionary era led to the organization in New York of the "Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves and Protecting such of them as have been or may be liberated." This Society ushered in a new day for the free persons of color of that city in organizing in 1787 the New York African Free School.[3] Among those interested in this organization and its enterprises were Melancthon Smith, John Bleecker, James Cogswell, Jacob Seaman, White Matlock, Matthew Clarkson, Nathaniel Lawrence, and John Murray, Jr.[4] The school opened in 1790 with Cornelius Davis as a teacher of forty pupils. In 1791 a lady was employed to instruct the girls in needle-work.[5] The expected advantage of this industrial training was soon realized.
[Footnote 1: La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Travels, etc., p. 233.]
[Footnote 2: Am. Conv., 1798, p. 7.]
[Footnote 3: Andrews, History of the New York African Free Schools, p. 14.]