These schools
as operated for the whites, however, were not primarily trade schools.
Those which admitted persons of African descent paid more attention to
actual industrial training for the reason that colored students could
not then hope to acquire such knowledge as apprentices. This tendency
was well shown by the action of the free Negroes through their
delegates in the convention assembled in Philadelphia in 1830.
Conversant with the policy of so reshaping the educational system of
the country as to carry knowledge even to the hovels, these leaders
were easily won to the scheme of reconstructing their schools "on the
manual labor system." In this they saw the redemption of the free
Negroes of the North. These gentlemen were afraid that the colored
people were not paying sufficient attention to the development of the
power to use their hands skillfully.[1] One of the first acts of the
convention was to inquire as to how fast colored men were becoming
attached to mechanical pursuits,[2] and whether or not there was any
prospect that a manual labor school for the instruction of the youth
would shortly be established. The report of the committee, to which
the question was referred, was so encouraging that the convention
itself decided to establish an institution of the kind at New Haven,
Connecticut.
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