These schools were sometimes
found in churches of the North, as in the cases of the schools in
the African Church of Boston, and the Sunday-school in the African
Improved Church of New Haven. In 1828 there was in that city another
such school supported by public-school money; three in Boston; one in
Salem; and one in Portland, Maine.[1]
[Footnote 1: Adams, _Anti-slavery_, p. 142.]
Outside of the city of New York, not so much interest was shown in
the education of Negroes as in the States which had a larger colored
population.[1] Those who were scattered through the State were allowed
to attend white schools, which did not "meet their special needs."[2]
In the metropolis, where the blacks constituted one-tenth of the
inhabitants in 1800, however, the mental improvement of the dark race
could not be neglected. The liberalism of the revolutionary era led
to the organization in New York of the "Society for Promoting the
Manumission of Slaves and Protecting such of them as have been or may
be liberated." This Society ushered in a new day for the free persons
of color of that city in organizing in 1787 the New York African
Free School.[3] Among those interested in this organization and its
enterprises were Melancthon Smith, John Bleecker, James Cogswell,
Jacob Seaman, White Matlock, Matthew Clarkson, Nathaniel Lawrence, and
John Murray, Jr.
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