NEGRO EDUCATION AND EVANGELIZATION.
I. Education. Lack of Early Missionary
Early Status (§ 1). Effort (§ 2).
In the Northern States Efforts for Negro Evan-
(§ 2). gelization (§ 3). In the South (§ 3). Results (§ 4). Benevolent Societies (§ 4). 2. Statistics. Educational Agencies (§ 5). 3. Denominational Evan- Results (§ 6). gelization. II. Evangelization. a. Methodists. 1. General History. b. Baptists. Religious Condition of Early Slaves (§ 1).
I. Education: Negro slaves imported to America were kept designedly in ignorance. The written and unwritten law of the land was that Negroes should receive no instruction. In the North this
custom gradually was given up, but 1. Early with the cotton gin in the South it Status. crystallized into law. The law of
Georgia (1829) is typical: "If any slave, Negro or free person of color, or any white person shall teach any other slave, Negro or free person of color to read or write, either written or printed characters, the same free person of color or slave shall be punished by fine and whipping, or fine or whipping, at the discretion of the court; and if a white person so offend, he, she, or they shall be
RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Neg-eb
Negro Education
punished with a fine not exceeding $500 and imprisonment in the common jail at the discretion of the court." Such laws were broken by individual planters here and there in the case of favorite houseservants; but in general they were enforced. In the northern states few actual prohibitory laws were enacted, but in Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and elsewhere, mob violence frequently arose against Negro schools, and in Connecticut the teaching of Negroes was restricted in 1833. Notwithstanding this attitude Negro schools early developed. In the North such schools fall roughly under five different periods: (1) 1704 to 1774, period of the pioneers; (2) 1774 to 1820, efforts of the free Negroes; (3) 1820 to 1835, period of partial public aid; (4) 1835 to 1870, period of separate public schools; (5) 1870 to 1890, period of mixed schools. In the first period fell the epoch-making efforts and far-seeing sacrifice of Elias Neau in New York and Anthony Benezet in Philadelphia. One of the first Negro schools in the land, if not the first, was that established in New York by Elias Neau in 1704. He gathered slaves and free 2. In the Negroes, to the number of 200, in Northern his own house nightly, and kept the States. school open until his death in 1722. So, too, Anthony Benezet and the Quakers of Philadelphia opened a Negro school in 1700, which has had a continuous existence until our day. After the revolution the free Negroes were quickened to exertions in many directions, especially in founding churches, beneficial societies, and schools. In Massachusetts a Negro school was formed at the house of Prince Hall, in 1798, and the teacher paid by the Negroes. In 1807 the Negroes of the District of Columbia, led by Bell, Franklin, and Liverpool, three free Negroes, founded the first Negro school. This school, supported by the Negroes, lapsed for awhile, but was revived in 1818, and many other schools were supported simultaneously. In Ohio the Negroes of Cincinnati opened a school of their own about 1820, and in New York the Negroes rallied to the support of the Old Neau school. No record is available of the moneys thus spent by Negroes for education, but at a later period, 1839, it is instructive to know that the Negroes of Cincinnati alone were paying nearly a thousand dollars a year ($889.03) for their schools. The energy and persistence of the Negroes led to benevolence and partial state aid. At first the State made no efforts to educate Negroes. In 1800 the Negroes of Boston tried to get the city to adopt their school, but it refused. About 1806 the city was induced to grant $200 a year to the school, and the children paid 12J cents a week as tuition. It was claimed at the time that technically the public schools were opened to Negroes, but no inducements were offered to make them attend, and the abstract right was rarely tested. In 1812 the Negro school was adopted by the city. A benevolent society conducted the Negro schools in New York until 1834, when the city took hold. In Ohio the Negroes were excluded from white schools in 1828, and practically no provision was made for them save through benevolence until 1849. The attempt to open private schools for Negroes was frowned upon
as in the Prudence Crandall case, and nearly all higher institutions, except Oberlin, were closed to Negroes. From about 1835 on it became general for the northern states to support wholly a separate system of Negro schools. They were usually poorer than those for whites, being worse taught, worse equipped, and wretchedly housed. Beginning with Massachusetts, in 1855, these separate schools have been abolished in nearly all northern states.
The history of schools for Negroes in the South falls also in five main epochs: (1) the ante-bellum schools; (2) the army schools; (3) the schools of the Freedmen's Bureau; (4) the missionary schools; and (5) the public schools.
Some few schools for Negroes existed here and
there in the South before the war. In the District
of Columbia, as already mentioned,
3. In the no less than fifteen different schools South. were conducted between 1800 and 1861, mainly at the expense of the colored people. In Maryland, St. Frances Academy, for colored girls, was founded by the Roman Catholics in 1829. In North Carolina there were before 1835 several schools maintained by the free Negroes. They had usually white teachers. After 1835 the few clandestine schools were taught by Negroes. In Charleston, S. O, there was a school for Negroes opened in 1744, which lasted some ten years. It was taught by a Negro and was for free Negroes only, although some slaves who hired their time managed to send their children there. Free Negroes in Georgia used to send children to Charleston for education. They returned and opened clandestine schools in Georgia. In Savannah a French Negro, Julien Froumontaine, from San Domingo, conducted a free Negro school openly from 1819 to 1829, and secretly for some time after. Schools were stopped nearly everywhere after 1830, and as slavery became more and more a commercial venture all attempts at Negro education were given up. During the war the first complication that confronted the armies was the continual arrival of fugitive slaves within the Union lines. At first the commands were rigid against receiving them. " Hereafter," wrote Halleck early in the war, " no slaves should be allowed to come within your lines at all." Other generals, however, thought differently. Some argued that confiscating slaves would weaken the South, others were imbued with abolition sentiment for right's sake. Twice attempts were made to free the slaves of certain localities by proclamation, but these orders were countermanded by the president. Still the fugitives poured into the lines and gradually . were used as laborers and helpers. Immediately teaching began and schools sprang up. When at last the emancipation proclamation was issued and Negro soldiers called for, it was necessary to provide more systematically for Negroes. Various systems and experiments grew up here and there. The freedmen were massed in large numbers at Fortress Monroe, Va., Washington, D. C, Beaufort, and Port Royal, S. O, New Orleans, La., Vicksburg and Corinth, Miss., Columbus, Ky., Cairo, 111., and elsewhere. In such places schools immediately sprang up under the army officers and chaplains. The most elaborate system, perhaps, was that under
Negro Education Negro Evangelization