]
[Footnote 2: Clarke, _The Condition of the Free People of Color_,
1859, p. 3, and the _Sixth Annual Report of the American Antislavery
Society_, p. 11.]
Having had such a little to encourage them to expect a general
admission into northern institutions, free blacks and abolitionists
concluded that separate colleges for colored people were necessary.
The institution demanded for them was thought to have an advantage
over the aristocratic college in that labor would be combined with
study, making the stay at school pleasant and enabling the poorest
youth to secure an education.[1] It was the kind of higher institution
which had already been established in several States to meet the needs
of the illiterate whites. Such higher training for the Negroes was
considered necessary, also, because their intermediate schools were
after the reaction in a languishing state. The children of color were
able to advance but little on account of having nothing to stimulate
them. The desired college was, therefore, boomed as an institution to
give the common schools vigor, "to kindle the flame of emulation,"
"to open to beginners discerning the mysteries of arithmetic other
mysteries beyond," and above all to serve them as Yale or Harvard did
as the capstone of the educational system of the other race.
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