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,