ley, once a student in the Colored Female Seminary of
Philadelphia under Sarah Douglass. This lady began teaching about
1830, getting some assistance from Mr. Calvert, an Englishman.[2] The
institution passed later into the hands of Thomas Lee, during the
incumbency of whom the school was closed by the "Snow Riot." This
was an attempt on the part of the white people to get rid of the
progressive Negroes of the District of Columbia. Their excuse for
such drastic action was that Benjamin Snow, a colored man running a
restaurant in the city, had made unbecoming remarks about the wives
of the white mechanics.[3] John F. Cook, one of the most influential
educators produced in the District of Columbia, was driven out of the
city by this mob. He then taught at Lancaster, Pa.

[Footnote 1: _Ibid._, p. 211.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 211.]

[Footnote 3: _Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed._, p. 201.]

While the colored schools of the District of Columbia suffered as a
result of this disturbance, the Negroes then in charge of them were
too ambitious, too well-educated to discontinue their work. The
situation, however, was in no sense encouraging. With the exception of
the churches of the Catholics and Quakers who vied with each other in
maintaining a benevolent attitude toward the education of the colored
people,[1] the churches of the District of Columbia, in the Sabbath
schools of which Negroes once sat in the same seats with white
persons, were on account of this riot closed to the darker race.[2]
This expulsion however, was not an unmixed evil, for the colored
people themselves thereafter established and directed a larger number
of institutions of learning.[3]

[Footnote 1: The Catholics admitted the colored people to their
churches on equal footing with others when they were driven to the
galleries of the Protestant churches. Furthermore, they continued
to admit them to their parochial schools. The Sisters of Georgetown
trained colored girls, and the parochial school of the Aloysius Church
at one time had as many as two hundred and fifty pupils of color. Many
of the first colored teachers of the District of Columbia obtained
their education in these schools. See _Special Report of U.S. Com. of
Ed._, 1871, p. 218 _et. seq._]

[Footnote 2: _Sp. Report_, etc. 187, pp. 217, 218, 219, 220, 221.]

[Footnote 3: _Ibid._, pp. 220-222.]

The colored schools of the District of Columbia soon resumed their
growth recovering