that State. The
enterprise, however, was not well supported, and little was heard of
it in later years. Some asserted it was a money-making scheme for the
proprietor, and that the Negroes taught there were in reality slaves;
others went to the press to defend it as a benevolent effort. Both
sides so muddled the affair that it is difficult to determine exactly
what the intentions of the founders were.[1]

[Footnote 1: Adams, _Anti-slavery_, p. 152.]

CHAPTER VI

EDUCATING THE URBAN NEGRO

Such an impetus was given Negro education during the period of better
beginnings that some of the colored city schools then established have
existed even until to-day. Negroes learned from their white friends to
educate themselves. In the Middle and Southern States, however, much
of the sentiment in favor of developing the intellect of the Negro
passed away during the early part of the nineteenth century. This
reform, like many others of that day, suffered when Americans forgot
the struggle for the rights of man. Recovering from the social
upheaval of the Revolution, caste soon began to claim its own. To
discourage the education of the lowest class was natural to the
aristocrats who on coming to power established governments based on
the representation of interests, restriction of suffrage, and the
ineligibility of the poor to office. After this period the work of
enlightening the blacks in the southern and border States was largely
confined to a few towns and cities where the concentration of the
colored population continued.

The rise of the American city made possible the contact of the colored
people with the world, affording them a chance to observe what the
white man was doing, and to develop the power to care for themselves.
The Negroes who had this opportunity to take over the western
civilization were servants belonging to the families for which they
worked; slaves hired out by their owners to wait upon persons; and
watermen, embracing fishermen, boatmen, and sailors. Not a few slaves
in cities were mechanics, clerks, and overseers. In most of these
employments the rudiments of an education were necessary, and what the
master did not seem disposed to teach the slaves so situated, they
usually learned by contact with their fellowmen who were better
informed. Such persons were the mulattoes resulting from
miscegenation, and therefore protected from the rigors of the slave
code; house servants, rewarded with unusual