FOOTNOTES:
[55] This is inserted in this volume as the more appropriate place.
[56] Slavery in Massachusetts, pp. 228, 229.
[57] Massachusetts Mercury, vol. xvi. No. 22, Sept. 16, 1780.
CHAPTER XII.
NEGRO SCHOOL LAWS.
1619-1860.
The Possibilities of the Human Intellect.—Ignorance Favorable to Slavery.—An Act by the Legislature of Alabama imposing a Penalty on any one Instructing a Colored Person.—Educational Privileges of the Creoles in the City of Mobile.—Prejudice against Colored Schools in Connecticut.—The Attempt of Miss Prudence Crandall to admit Colored Girls into her School at Canterbury.—The Indignation of the Citizens at this Attempt to Mix the Races in Education.—The Legislature of Connecticut passes a Law abolishing the School.—The Building assaulted by a Mob.—Miss Crandall arrested and imprisoned for teaching Colored Children against the Law.—Great Excitement.—The Law finally repealed.—An Act by the Legislature of Delaware taxing Persons who brought into, or sold Slaves out of, the State.—Under Act of 1829 Money received for the Sale of Slaves in Florida was added to the School Fund in that State.—Georgia prohibits the Education of Colored Persons under Heavy Penalty.—Illinois establishes Separate Schools for Colored Children.—The "Free Mission Institute" at Quincy, Illinois, destroyed by a Missouri Mob.—Numerous and Cruel Slave Laws in Kentucky retard the Education of the Negroes.—An Act passed in Louisiana preventing the Negroes in any Way from being instructed.—Maine gives equal School Privileges to Whites and Blacks.—St. Francis Academy for Colored Girls founded in Baltimore in 1831.—The Wells School.—The First School for Colored Children established in Boston by Intelligent Colored Men in 1798.—A School-house for the Colored Children built and paid for out of a Fund left by Abiel Smith for that Purpose.—John B. Russworm one of the Teachers and afterward Governor of the Colony of Cape Palmas, Liberia.—First Primary School for Colored Children established in 1820.—Missouri passes Stringent Laws against the Instruction of Negroes.—New York provides for the Education of Negroes.—Elias Neau opens a School in New York City for Negro Slaves in 1704.—"New York African Free School" in 1786.—Visit of Lafayette to the African Schools in 1824.—His Address.—Public Schools for Colored Children in New York.—Colored Schools in Ohio.—"Cincinnati High School" for Colored Youths founded in 1844.—Oberlin College opens its Doors to Colored Students.—The Establishment of Colored Schools in Pennsylvania by Anthony Benezet in 1750.—His Will.—"Institute for Colored Youths" established in 1837.—"Avery College," at Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, founded in 1849.—Ashmun Institute, or Lincoln University, founded in October, 1856.—South Carolina takes Definite Action against the Education or Promotion of the Colored Race in 1800-1803-1834.—Tennessee makes no Discrimination against Color in the School Law of 1840.—Little Opportunity afforded in Virginia for the Colored Man to be enlightened.—Stringent Laws enacted.—History of Schools for the Colored Population in the District of Columbia.
THE institution of American slavery needed protection from the day of its birth to the day of its death. Whips, thumbscrews, and manacles of iron were far less helpful to it than the thraldom of the intellects of its hapless victims. "Created a little lower than the angels," "crowned with glory and honor," armed with authority "over every living creature," man was intended by his Maker to rule the world through his intellect. The homogeneousness of the crude faculties of man has been quite generally admitted throughout the world; while even scientists, differing widely in many other things, have united in ascribing to the human mind everywhere certain possibilities. But one class of men have dissented from this view—the slave-holders of all ages. A justification of slavery has been sought in the alleged belief of the inferiority of the persons enslaved; while the broad truism of the possibilities of the human mind was confessed in all legislation that sought to prevent slaves from acquiring knowledge. So the slave-holder asserted his belief in the mental inferiority of the Negro, and then advertised his lack of faith in his assertion by making laws to prevent the Negro intellect from receiving those truths which would render him valueless as a slave, but equal to the duties of a freeman.