Mrs. Fanny L. Jackson Coppin was born in Washington, D. C., and was educated at Oberlin University, Oberlin, Ohio, from which institution she graduated. In 1865, she came, by invitation, to Philadelphia, Pa., and accepted a position as teacher in the "Institute for Colored Youth," where she has taught constantly ever since; for the past twenty-eight years she has filled the position of principal. Under her management the Industrial Department was originated and is now an important part of the work of this splendid school. She is also the originator of the "Woman's Exchange."
MRS. FANNY L. JACKSON COPPIN.
While there are a great many persons in Philadelphia who know and admire Mrs. Coppin for her great executive ability, few really know what a remarkable woman she is. And yet but a brief conversation with her, or a few moments contact and association, suffices to convince any one that she is not only a woman of marked intellectual power, but one of a wide and diverse scope of knowledge, both abstruse and applied.
She is a credit to womankind and while her work as a teacher has been among colored people, few women are better known as educators and few if any schools have done a better work in the interest of the race, than the one she is at the head of. I am told that the "Institute for Colored Youth" was in the first place started as an experiment, because it was generally believed that the Negro could not master the higher branches of education. But in that the colored youth has proven quite as able as the whites and the results have been most satisfactory.
CAMP NELSON ACADEMY.
Camp Nelson Academy is situated in Jessimine Co., Ky., near Nicholasville, and is midway between Lexington and Danville.
The academy has one good school building and a dormitory 30 × 60, three stories high.
To the academy lot is added one hundred and fifteen acres of land, as endowment, thus far.