The successful strivings of the race in the District of Columbia furnish us with striking examples of Negroes making educational progress. When two white teachers, Henry Potter and Mrs. Haley, invited black children to study with their white pupils, the colored people gladly availed themselves of this opportunity.[1] Mrs. Maria Billings, the first to establish a real school for Negroes in Georgetown, soon discovered that she had their hearty support. She had pupils from all parts of the District of Columbia, and from as far as Bladensburg, Maryland. The tuition fee in some of these schools was a little high, but many free blacks of the District of Columbia were sufficiently well established to meet these demands. The rapid progress made by the Bell and Browning families during this period was of much encouragement to the ambitious colored people, who were laboring to educate their children.[2]
[Footnote 1: Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed., 1871, pp. 195 et seq.]
[Footnote 2: Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 195.]
The city Negroes, however, were learning to do more than merely attend accessible elementary schools. In 1807 George Bell, Nicholas Franklin, and Moses Liverpool, former slaves, built the first colored schoolhouse in the District of Columbia. Just emerging from bondage, these men could not teach themselves, but employed a white man to take charge of the school.[1] It was not a success. Pupils of color thereafter attended the school of Anne Maria Hall, a teacher from Prince George County, Maryland, and those of teachers who instructed white children.[2] The ambitious Negroes of the District of Columbia, however, were not discouraged by the first failure to provide their own educational facilities. The Bell School which had been closed and used as a dwelling, opened again in 1818 under the auspices of an association of free people of color of the city of Washington called the "Resolute Beneficial Society." The school was declared open then "for the reception of free people of color and others that ladies and gentlemen may think proper to send to be instructed in reading, writing, arithmetic, English grammar, or other branches of education apposite to their capacities, by steady, active and experienced teachers, whose attention is wholly devoted to the purpose described." The founders presumed that free colored families would embrace the advantages thus presented to them either by subscription to the funds of the Society or by sending their children to the school. Since the improvement of the intellect and the morals of the colored youth were the objects of the institution, the patronage of benevolent ladies and gentlemen was solicited. They declared, too, that "to avoid disagreeable occurrences no writing was to be done by the teacher for a slave, neither directly nor indirectly to serve the purpose of a slave on any account whatever."[3] This school was continued until 1822 under Mr. Pierpont, of Massachusetts, a relative of the poet. He was succeeded two years later by John Adams, a shoemaker, who was known as the first Negro to teach in the District of Columbia.[4]
[Footnote 1: Ibid., 196.]
[Footnote 2: Ibid., 197.]
[Footnote 3: Daily National Intelligencer, August 29, 1818.]
[Footnote 4: Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 198.]
Of equal importance was the colored seminary established by Henry Smothers, a pupil of Mrs. Billings. Like her, he taught first in Georgetown. He began his advanced work near the Treasury building, having an attendance of probably one hundred and fifty pupils, generally paying tuition. The fee, however, was not compulsory. Smothers taught for about two years, and then was succeeded by John Prout, a colored man of rare talents, who later did much in opposition to the scheme of transporting Negroes to Africa before they had the benefits of education.[1] The school was then called the "Columbian Institute." Prout was later assisted by Mrs. Anne Maria Hall.[2]
[Footnote 1: Ibid., 1871, p. 199.]