not confined to Cincinnati alone, but came up throughout
the section north of the Ohio River.[1] Where the black population was
large enough to form a social center of its own, Negroes and their
friends could more easily provide for the education of colored
children. In settlements, however, in which just a few of them were
found, some liberal-minded man usually asked the question why persons
taxed to support a system of free schools should not share its
benefits. To strengthen their position these benevolent men referred
to the rapid progress of the belated people, many of whom within
less than a generation from their emergence from slavery had become
intelligent, virtuous, and respectable persons, and in not a few
cases had accumulated considerable wealth.[2] Those who insisted that
children of African blood should be debarred from the regular public
schools had for their defense the so-called inequality of the races.
Some went so far as to concede the claims made for the progressive
blacks, and even to praise those of their respective communities.[3]
But great as their progress had been, the advocates of the restriction
of their educational privileges considered it wrong to claim for them
equality with the Caucasian race. They believed that society would
suffer from an intermingling of the children of the two races.

[Footnote 1: Hickok, _The Negro in Ohio_, ch. iii.; and Boone,
_History of Education in Indiana_, p. 237.]

[Footnote 2: Foote, _The Schools of Cincinnati_, p. 93.]

[Footnote 3: _Ibid_., p. 92.]

In Indiana the problem of educating Negroes was more difficult. R.G.
Boone says that, "nominally for the first few years of the educational
experience of the State, black and white children had equal privileges
in the few schools that existed."[1] But this could not continue long.
Abolitionists were moving the country, and freedmen soon found enemies
as well as friends in the Ohio valley. Indiana, which was in 1824 so
very "solicitous for a system of education which would guard against
caste distinction," provided in 1837 that the white inhabitants alone
of each congressional township should constitute the local school
corporation.[2] In 1841 a petition was sent to the legislature
requesting that a reasonable share of the school fund be appropriated
to the education of Negroes, but the committee to which it was
referred reported that legislation on that subject was inexpedient.[3]
With the exception of pro