ol with
white students. The New Jersey Constitution of 1844 provided that the
funds for the support of the public schools should be applied for the
equal benefit of all the people of that State.[1] Considered then
entitled to the benefits of this fund, colored pupils were early
admitted into the public schools without any social distinction.[2]
This does not mean that there were no colored schools in that
commonwealth. Negroes in a few settlements like that of Springtown had
their own schools.[3] Separate schools were declared illegal by an act
of the General Assembly in 1881.

[Footnote 1: Thorpe, _Federal and State Constitutions_, vol. v., p.
2604.]

[Footnote 2: _Southern Workman_, vol. xxxvii., p. 390.]

[Footnote 3: _Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed_., 1871, p. 400.]

Certain communities of New York provided separate schools for colored
pupils rather than admit them to those open to white children. On
recommendation of the superintendent of schools in 1823 the State
adopted the policy of organizing schools exclusively for colored
people.[1] In places where they already existed, the State could aid
the establishment as did the New York Common Council in 1824, when it
appropriated a portion of its fund to the support of the African Free
Schools.[2] In 1841 the New York legislature authorized any district,
with the approbation of the school commissioners, to establish a
separate school for the colored children in their locality. The
superintendent's report for 1847 shows that schools for Negroes had
been established in fifteen counties in the State, reporting an
enrollment of 5000 pupils. For the maintenance of these schools
the sum of $17,000 had been annually expended. Colored pupils were
enumerated by the trustees in their annual reports, drew public money
for the district in which they resided, and were equally entitled
with white children to the benefit of the school fund. In the rural
districts colored children were generally admitted to the common
schools. Wherever race prejudice, however, was sufficiently violent to
exclude them from the village school, the trustees were empowered
to use the Negroes' share of the public money to provide for their
education elsewhere. At the same time indigent Negroes were to be
exempted from the payment of the "rate bill" which fell as a charge
upon the other citizens of the district.[3]

[Footnote 1: Randall, _Hist. of Common School System of New York_, p.
24.]