By Don Valentine
Our first Black school, African Free School, was founded 1787 in lower Manhattan by the New York Manumission Society. Webster’s dictionary defines “Manumission: a setting free from slavery.” The school followed the Society’s creation in 1785 by some of New York’s wealthiest White citizens. New York Historical Society recorded that, “Its members included John Jay and Alexander Hamilton. Their work on behalf of Black New Yorkers began with protesting the widespread practice of kidnapping Black New Yorkers (both slave and free) and selling them as slaves elsewhere.
Their charter was written to leave no ambiguity about the Society’s mission. “Whereas many respectable and benevolent Persons in the City of New York have associated under the denomination of ‘the Society for promoting the manumission of Slaves and protecting such of them as have been or may be Liberated,’ and have Instituted a School in said City, called the African Free School for the humane and charitable purpose of Educating negro Children to the end that they may become good and useful Citizens of the State.”
At the school, the curriculum and teaching style was designed to mold the students into Blacks who would not be an irritant to the White majority. Time magazine wrote, “Per Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton biography, lessons at the school emphasized discipline to ‘paternalistically’ keep students in line and fulfill the society’s goal of keeping Black people from ‘running into practices of immorality or sinking into habits of idleness.’”
Two of the smartest patriots in the Union, John Jay and Alexander Hamiton, presciently saw that slavery was not a sustainable model for the new nation. Historically slavery has lasted for over a thousand years in some countries, but it has always collapsed. The tenuous goal of educating Blacks was an effort to make a civil transition from slavery. It was an awkward maneuver for the country as many good men balanced the economy of slave labor, versus the moral sins of slavery.
Nyhistory.org summarized the incongruity this way: “… many members of the society were slaveholders when they joined the society, and some continued to be slaveholders throughout their tenure. The Society rejected Alexander Hamilton’s suggested resolution that anyone who wanted to be a member had to manumit their slaves.” John Jay kept his slaves while he was a member. It should be noted that he did sign a gradual emancipation law in 1799 as Governor of New York.
New York integrated the school into the general school population in 1834. The prominent school alumni included Dr. James McCune Smith, the first Black to earn a university medical degree, Ira Aldridge the first Black Shakespearean actor, Charles Lewis Reason, first Black college professor and minister Henry Highland Garnet an abolitionist.
Bessie Coleman said, “Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.”
