After a year's training at Clinton, Oneida County, New York, where she obtained the elements of education under the most adverse circumstances of ill health and lack of funds, Miss Miner accepted a call to teach in Mississippi in order to pay the debts incurred for the training she had already received. Her experience in Mississippi was indeed invaluable, for there she learned through horrible experiences the evils of the institution of slavery. She boldly protested against the cruelties of the slaveholders and the institution in general. She innocently requested permission to teach the slaves of the planter whose daughters she was then instructing. When told that such was a criminal offense against the laws of Mississippi and that she should "go North and teach the 'Niggers,'" Miss Miner with an intrepid spirit resolved then and there that she would go North and teach them. Out of this unpleasant experience developed the determination to found a Normal School for girls of color in the city of Washington.
Returning North, Miss Miner found other difficulties than poor health confronting her in her efforts to establish a school for the Negro youth in the District of Columbia. Funds had to be raised, pro-slavery opposition had to be overcome, and public sentiment had to be changed at least to indifference. Each of these in itself was sufficiently colossal to try the strength, physical and moral, of the ablest anti-slavery agitators of that day. It was at the time of the passage of that infamous Fugitive Slave Law, when freedmen and runaways like William Parker, Jerry McHenry and Joshua Glover were knocked down, beaten, bound and cast into prison; when abolitionists were incarcerated for their anti-slavery propaganda and giving aid to the fugitives; when even our valiant Frederick Douglass admitted himself too timid to support any such project as that undertaken by Miss Miner in the city of Washington.[2] It was in times such as these that this fearless and resolute little woman, with an enthusiasm that seemingly glistened in her penetrating eyes, determined to give her life to the cause of alleviating suffering, dispelling ignorance, and liberating the oppressed Americans in body and mind.
With the small sum of one hundred dollars that she had secured from Mrs. Ednah Thomas,[3] of Philadelphia, a member of the Society of Friends, Miss Miner started out upon her great work in behalf of the Negro children of the District of Columbia. Her thrift prompted her to solicit funds of various and peculiar sorts. Donations of old papers, books, weights, measures and other castaway material were transformed by this real teacher into valuable material for the instruction of her undeveloped pupils.
Funds of the material sort were not the only difficulties that beset her road of progress, for pro-slavery opposition assailed Miss Miner from every side.[4] Such propaganda as the following appeared in the National Intelligencer, a Washington newspaper of pro-slavery sentiments and was spread far and wide. (1) The school would attract free colored people from the adjoining States, (2) it was proposed to give them an education far beyond what their political and social condition would justify, (3) the school would be a center of influence directed against the existence of slavery in the District of Columbia, and (4) it might endanger the institution of slavery and even rend asunder the Union itself.[5]
The truth of some parts of this declaration was quite evident and irrefutable, for education, as Miss Miner understood it, was destined to make every slave a man and every man free. This, of course, increased the difficulty of Miss Miner's task but her faith was abiding and her courage unabated. Miss Miner realized fully that the lot of the eight thousand free people of color of the District of Columbia was but little better than that of the 3,000 slaves, for the former, though free according to the letter of the law, in actual life had no rights that a white man was compelled to respect. They were not admitted to public institutions, could not attend the city schools, could not testify against a white man in court, and could not travel without a pass without running the risk of being cast into prison.
Amidst it all, on the 6th day of December 1851, in a rented room about fourteen feet square, in the frame house on Eleventh Street near New York Avenue then owned and occupied as a dwelling by Edward C. Younger,[6] a Negro, Myrtilla Miner with six pupils established as a private institution for the education of girls of color the first Normal School in the District of Columbia and the fourth one in the United States. Increase of enrollment soon forced her to secure accommodations and within two months she had moved into a house on the north side of F Street between Eighteenth and Nineteenth, near the house then occupied by William T. Carroll and Charles H. Winder. This house furnished her a very comfortable room for her growing school of well-behaved girls, from the best Negro families of the District of Columbia. Threats on the part of white neighbors to set fire to the house forced her to leave the home of the Negro family with whom she had stayed but one month and to seek quarters elsewhere. Miss Miner then succeeded in getting accommodations in the dwelling-house of a German family on K Street, near the K Street market. After tarrying a few months there, she moved to L Street into a room in the building known as the "The Two Sisters," then occupied by a white family. But the inconvenience of holding school in rented quarters of private dwellings proved a very unpleasant one indeed; for not only did she suffer the lack of comfort which such quarters naturally could not offer, but found herself constantly harassed by the necessity of moving to escape the enmity and persecution of her white neighbors.
A new day, however, was to dawn. With the aid of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Dr. Gamaliel Bailey and a few such faithful Philadelphia friends as Thomas Williamson, Samuel Rhoads, Benjamin Tatham, Jasper Cope and Catherine Morris, enough funds were raised to purchase a site of three acres or more for a permanent home on a lot near N Street and New Hampshire Avenue, between Nineteenth and Twentieth Streets, Northwest. Though the environment of this new home was most pleasing and beautiful, being surrounded with flowers and fruit trees, the enmity of the white hoodlums still followed her. She and her pupils were frequently assailed with torrents of stones and other missiles. Once threatened by mob violence, Miss Miner bravely and defiantly exclaimed, "Mob my school! You dare not! If you tear it down over my head I shall get another house. There is no law to prevent my teaching these people and I shall teach them even unto death!" Testimony of some of Miss Miner's former pupils upholds such a defiance as truly descriptive of her fearless nature.
In its earlier days the Miner Normal School was supported by private funds and directed by a board of trustees consisting of Benjamin Tatham and H. W. Bellows of New York; Samuel M. Janney of Virginia; Johns Hopkins of Baltimore; Samuel Rhoads and Thomas Williamson of Philadelphia; G. Bailey and L. D. Gale of Washington; C. E. Stowe of Andover; H. W. Beecher of Brooklyn, together with an executive committee consisting of S. J. Bowen, J. M. Wilson and L. D. Gale of Washington; Miss Miner, principal and William H. Beecher, secretary.
The curriculum of the school then embraced boarding, domestic economy, teachers' training course and the primary departments. It is interesting to note that some of the advanced ideas in education today, such as student self-government, vitalized teaching, socialized recitation, and civic as well as personal hygiene, were taught and practiced by Miss Miner during the fifties of the last century.
As an illustration of pupil self-government, I quote the following from the Memoir of M. Miner by Mrs. Ellen M. O'Connor, concerning a visit made by Miss Margaret Robinson of Philadelphia to Miss Miner's school: "In the winter of 1853 accompanied by a friend, I visited the school of Myrtilla Miner, under circumstances of peculiar interest. Arriving about ten A. M., we learned from a pupil at the door that the teacher was absent on business of importance to the school. We were not a little disappointed, supposing all recitations would await her coming. What was our surprise on entering to find every girl in her place, closely occupied with her studies. We seated ourselves by polite invitation; soon a class read; then one in mental arithmetic exercised itself, the more advanced pupils acting as monitors; all was done without confusion. When the teacher entered she expressed no surprise, but took up the business where she found it and went on." On one occasion, being obliged to leave for several days, Miss Miner propounded to the pupils the question, whether the school should be closed, or they should continue their exercises without her? They chose the latter. On her return she found all doing well, not the least disorder having occurred.