[Footnote 2:  Minutes of the Fourth Annual Convention for the Improvement of the Free People of Color, p. 27.]

[Footnote 3:  Minutes of the Third Annual Convention for the Improvement of the Free People of Color, p. 34.]

[Footnote 4:  The Abolitionist (November 1833), p. 191.]

[Footnote 5:  The Liberator, October 22, 1831.]

Before these well-laid plans could mature, however, unexpected opposition developed in New Haven.  Indignation meetings were held, protests against this project were filed, and the free people of color were notified that the institution was not desired in Connecticut.[1] It was said that these memorialists feared that a colored college so near to Yale might cause friction between the two student bodies, and that the school might attract an unusually large number of undesirable Negroes.  At their meeting the citizens of New Haven resolved “That the founding of colleges for educating colored people is an unwarrantable and dangerous undertaking to the internal concerns of other states and ought to be discouraged, and that the mayor, aldermen, common council, and freemen will resist the movement by every lawful means."[2] In view of such drastic action the promoters had to abandon their plan.  No such protests were made by the citizens of New Haven, however, when the colonizationists were planning to establish there a mission school to prepare Negroes to leave the country.

[Footnote 1:  Monroe, Cyclopaedia of Education, vol. iv., p. 406.]

[Footnote 2:  Ibid., vol. iv., p. 406; and The Liberator, July 9, 1831.]

The movement, however, was not then stopped by this outburst of race prejudice in New Haven.  Directing attention to another community, the New England Antislavery Society took up this scheme and collected funds to establish a manual labor school.  When the officials had on hand about $1000 it was discovered that they could accomplish their aim by subsidizing the Noyes Academy of Canaan, New Hampshire, and making such changes as were necessary to subserve the purposes intended.[1] The plan was not to convert this into a colored school.  The promoters hoped to maintain there a model academy for the co-education of the races “on the manual labor system.”  The treasurer of the Antislavery Society was to turn over certain moneys to this academy to provide for the needs of the colored students, who then numbered fourteen of the fifty-two enrolled.  But although it had been reported that the people of the town were in accord with the principal’s acceptance of this proposition, there were soon evidences to the contrary.  Fearing imaginary evils, these modern Canaanites destroyed the academy, dragging the building to a swamp with a hundred yoke of oxen.[2] The better element of the town registered against this outrage only a slight protest.  H.H.  Garnett and Alexander Crummell were among the colored students who sought education at this academy.