[3]
[Footnote 1: Foote, _The Schools of Cincinnati_, p. 92.]
[Footnote 2: _Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed_., 1871, p. 372.]
[Footnote 3: _Ibid_., p. 372.]
The agitation for the admission of colored children to the public
schools was 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.
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