Before the close of the Civil War the sentiment of the people of the State of New York had changed sufficiently to permit colored children to attend the regular public schools in several communities.  This, however, was not general.  It was, therefore, provided in the revised code of that State in 1864 that the board of education of any city or incorporated village might establish separate schools for children and youth of African descent provided such schools be supported in the same manner as those maintained for white children.  The last vestige of caste in the public schools of New York was not exterminated until 1900, in the administration of Theodore Roosevelt as Governor of New York.  The legislature then passed an act providing that no one should be denied admittance to any public school on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Laws of New York, 1900, ch. 492.]

In Rhode Island, where the black population was proportionately larger than in some other New England States, special schools for persons of color continued.  These efforts met with success at Newport.  In the year 1828 a separate school for colored children was established at Providence and placed in charge of a teacher receiving a salary of $400 per annum.[1] A decade later another such school was opened on Pond Street in the same city.  About this time the school law of Rhode Island was modified so as to make it a little more favorable to the people of color.  The State temporarily adopted a rule by which the school fund was thereafter not distributed, as formerly, according to the number of inhabitants below the age of sixteen.  It was to be apportioned, thereafter, according to the number of white persons under the age of ten years, “together with five-fourteenths of the said [colored] population between the ages of ten and twenty-four years.”  This law remained in force between the years 1832 and 1845.  Under the new system these schools seemingly made progress.  In 1841 they were no longer giving the mere essentials of reading and writing, but combined the instruction of both the grammar and the primary grades.[2]

[Footnote 1:  Stockwell, Hist. of Education in R.I., p. 169.]

[Footnote 2:  Stockwell, Hist. of Education in R.I., p. 51.]

Thereafter Rhode Island had to pass through the intense antislavery struggle which had for its ultimate aim both the freedom of the Negro and the democratization of the public schools.  Petitions were sent to the legislature, and appeals were made to representatives asking for a repeal of those laws which permitted the segregation of the colored children in the public schools.  But intense as this agitation became, and urgently as it was put before the public, it failed to gain sufficient momentum to break down the barriers prior to 1866 when the legislature of Rhode Island passed an act abolishing separate schools for Negroes.[1]