[Footnote 5: Ibid., p. 20.]
After the first decade of the nineteenth century the movement for the uplift of the Negroes around Philadelphia was checked a little by the migration to that city of many freedmen who had been lately liberated. The majority of them did not "exhibit that industry, economy, and temperance" which were "expected by many and wished by all."[1] Not deterred, however, by this seemingly discouraging development, the friends of the race toiled on as before. In 1810 certain Quaker women who had attempted to establish a school for colored girls in 1795 apparently succeeded.[2] The institution, however, did not last many years. But the Clarkson Hall schools maintained by the Abolition Society were then making such progress that the management was satisfied that they furnished a decided refutation of the charge that the "mental endowments of the descendants of the African race are inferior to those possessed by their white brethren."[3] They asserted without fear of contradiction that the pupils of that seminary would sustain a fair comparison with those of any other institution in which the same elementary branches were taught. In 1815 these schools were offering free instruction to three hundred boys and girls, and to a number of adults attending evening schools. These victories had been achieved despite the fact that in regard to some of the objects of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade "a tide of prejudice, popular and legislative, set strongly against them."[4] After 1818, however, help was obtained from the State to educate the colored children of Columbia and Philadelphia.
[Footnote 1: Proceedings of the American Conv., 1809, p. 16, and 1812, p. 16.]
[Footnote 2: Wickersham, History of Ed. in Pa., p. 252.]
[Footnote 3: Proceedings of the American Convention, etc., 1812,
Report from Philadelphia.]
[Footnote 4: Ibid., 1815, Report from Phila.]
The assistance obtained from the State, however, was not taken as a pretext for the cessation of the labors on the part of those who had borne the burden for more than a century. The faithful friends of the colored race remained as active as ever. In 1822 the Quakers in the Northern Liberties organized the Female Association which maintained one or more schools.[1] That same year the Union Society founded in 1810 for the support of schools and domestic manufactures for the benefit of the "African race and people of color" was conducting three schools for adults.[2] The Infant School Society of Philadelphia was also doing good work in looking after the education of small colored children.[3] In the course of time crowded conditions in the colored schools necessitated the opening of additional evening classes and the erection of larger buildings.
[Footnote 1: Wickersham, History of Education in Pa., p. 252.]
[Footnote 2: One of these was at the Sessions House of the Third Presbyterian Church; one at Clarkston Schoolhouse, Cherry Street; one in the Academy on Locust Street. See Statistical Inquiry into the Condition of the Colored People of Philadelphia, p. 19; and Wickersham, Education in Pa., p. 253.]
[Footnote 3: Statistical Inquiry, etc., p. 19.]