[Footnote 1: _Niles's Register_, vol. xvi., pp. 241-243 and vol. xxiii., p. 23.]
[Footnote 2: See _The Proceedings of the Am. Conv. of Abolition Societies_.]
In New England, Negroes had almost from the beginning of their enslavement some chance for mental, moral, and spiritual improvement, but the revolutionary movement was followed in that section by a general effort to elevate the people of color through the influence of the school and church. In 1770 the Rhode Island Quakers were endeavoring to give young Negroes such an education as becomes Christians. In 1773 Newport had a colored school, maintained by a society of benevolent clergymen of the Church of England, with a handsome fund for a mistress to teach thirty children reading and writing. Providence did not exhibit such activity until the nineteenth century. Having a larger black population than any other city in New England, Boston was the center of these endeavors. In 1798 a separate school for colored children, under the charge of Elisha Sylvester, a white man, was established in that city in the house of Primus Hall, a Negro of very good standing.[1] Two years later sixty-six free blacks of that city petitioned the school committee for a separate school, but the citizens in a special town meeting called to consider the question refused to grant this request.[2] Undaunted by this refusal, the patrons of the special school established in the house of Primus Hall, employed Brown and Hall of Harvard College as instructors, until 1806.[3] The school was then moved to the African Meeting House in Belknap Street where it remained until 1835 when, with funds contributed by Abiel Smith, a building was erected. An epoch in the history of Negro education in New England was marked in 1820, when the city of Boston opened its first primary school for the education of colored children.[4]
[Footnote 1: _Special Report of U.S. Com. of Ed._, 1871, p. 357.]
[Footnote 3: Next to be instructor of this institution was Prince Saunders, who was brought to Boston by Dr. Channing and Caleb Bingham in 1809. Brought up in the family of a Vermont lawyer, and experienced as a diplomatic official of Emperor Christopher of Hayti, Prince Saunders was able to do much for the advancement of this work. Among others who taught in this school was John B. Russworm, a graduate of Bowdoin College, and, later, Governor of the Colony of Cape Palmas in Southern Liberia. See _Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed._, 1871, p. 357; and _African Repository_, vol. ii., p. 271.]