296 Political Activity and Resistance to Oppression: From the American Revolution to the Civil War
leadership skills. By 1820, a second branch of the school
was opened, and along with providing sewing instruction
for the girls, the schools carried an enrollment of almost
500 students.
In 1828, the African Free Schools began to work with
the New York African Society for Mutual Relief, the Afri-
can Dorcas Association, and other rising middle-class or-
ganizations on a project that would increase enrollment in
the schools and provide material aid to lower-class black
families. Men from the New York African Society for Mu-
tual Relief were dispatched for home visits to enumerate the
households, children, and condition in which the families
were living; the women of the African Dorcas Association
would provide clothing as needed; and the appropriate-
aged children could then be enrolled in school.
Although the African Free Schools were established to
help the children of slaves and freedmen obtain the intellec-
tual knowledge, citizenship ideals, and life skills that would
allow them to succeed in the newly developing society
without slavery, no one knew to what extent these students
would actually be allowed to participate in the broader so-
ciety when they grew up. As a result, much ambivalence
can be seen in the curriculum. Even so, the African Free
Schools produced a number of prominent African Ameri-
can leaders. Along with numerous prosperous community
leaders and reformers, the graduates of the African Free
Schools include Rev. Henry Highland Garnet, Rev. Peter
Williams Jr., Dr. Alexander Crummell, and Dr. James Mc-
Cune Smith. All were outspoken in their various beliefs
concerning abolition and colonization, in addition to being
gift ed and prolifi c writers.
Like the school’s benefactor, the New York Manumis-
sion Society, many of its graduates were proponents of
radical abolition and African colonization. By the 1830s,
the New York Manumission Society withdrew its partici-
pation from the African Free Schools because its position
on African colonization directly confl icted with its earlier
goal of educating black children so that they could com-
pete equally with whites in American society. But by 1854,
seven African Free Schools existed in New York and were
absorbed into the public school system.
Like most early schools for blacks, a great deal of po-
tential confl ict existed around the school and its policies.
Administration and teachers were white: did that provide
the best education available or teach young black students
to be subservient? Whose best interest was being acted on,diff erent activities, yet everyone’s contributions were seen
as essential. Th e African Dorcas Association remained ac-
tive into the 1830s, and some of its members extended their
commitment to education by forming the Ladies Literary
Society in 1834.
See also: African Free Schools; Jennings, Elizabeth
Leslie M. AlexanderBibliography
Alexander, Leslie M. African or American? Black Identity and Po-
litical Activism in New York City, 1784–1861. Champaign:
University of Illinois Press, 2008.
Harris, Leslie M. In the Shadow of Slavery: African American in
New York City, 1626–1863. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2003.
African Free Schools
Th e African Free Schools of New York City were founded
in 1787 by the New York Manumission Society. Although
the New York Manumission Society was an organization of
white, wealthy men, which included John Jay and Alexan-
der Hamilton as members, its mission was to advocate for
the full abolition of African slavery. Th eir purpose in estab-
lishing the African Free Schools was to provide education
to the children of slaves and freemen, allowing them to take
an active and equal role in white society.
Th e fi rst of the African Free Schools, opened just nine
years aft er New York outlawed the sale of slaves imported
into the colony, was a one-room facility that could educate
approximately 40 students. Th e fi rst students were primar-
ily children of people who had been enslaved. By 1791, a
female teacher was added to teach needlework to the girls
at the school, and the school continued to keep between 40
and 60 students enrolled at any given time. Th e teaching
was done in the traditional method for lower-class 18th-
century schools, known as the Lancasterian method: one
teacher and many student monitors, or assistants, to teach
large-sized classes. Th e student monitors undertook much
of the responsibility for the interaction with individual stu-
dents and rewarding their eff orts. Although some visitors
viewed this method of instruction as less than adequate for
the students and as taking advantage of those high perform-
ers chosen as monitors, others saw the role of the moni-
tors, in particular, as a valid method of developing good