[Footnote 1:  Laws of the State of Ohio, vol. liii., p. 118.]

[Footnote 2:  Ibid., p. 118.]

During the contest for the control of the colored schools certain Negroes of Cincinnati were endeavoring to make good their claim that their children had a right to attend any school maintained by the city.  Acting upon this contention a colored patron sent his son to a public school, which on account of his presence became the center of unusual excitement.[1] Miss Isabella Newhall, the teacher to whom he went, immediately complained to the Board of Education, requesting that he be expelled on account of his race.  After “due deliberation” the Board of Education decided by a vote of fifteen to ten that he would have to withdraw from that school.  Thereupon two members of that body, residing in the district of the timorous teacher, resigned.[2]

[Footnote 1:  New York Tribune, Feb. 19, 1855.]

[Footnote 2:  New York Tribune, Feb. 19, 1855; and Carlier, L’Esclavage, etc., p. 339.]

Thereafter some progress in the development of separate schools in Cincinnati was noted.  By 1855 the Board of Education of that city had established four public schools for the instruction of Negro youths.  The colored pupils were showing their appreciation by regular attendance, manly deportment, and rapid progress in the acquisition of knowledge.  Speaking of these Negroes in 1855, John P. Foote said that they shared with the white citizens that respect for education, and the diffusion of knowledge, which has ever been one of their “characteristics,” and that they had, therefore, been more generally intelligent than free persons of color not only in other States but in all other parts of the world.[1] It was in appreciation of the worth of this class of progressive Negroes that in 1858 Nicholas Longworth built a comfortable school-house for them in Cincinnati, leasing it with the privilege of purchasing it in fourteen years.[2] They met these requirements within the stipulated time, and in 1859 secured through other agencies the construction of another building in the western portion of the city.[3]

[Footnote 1:  Foote, The Schools of Cincinnati, p. 92.]

[Footnote 2:  Special Report of the U.S.  Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 372.]

[Footnote 3:  Ibid., p. 372.]

The agitation for the admission of colored children to the public schools was not confined to Cincinnati alone, but came up throughout the section north of the Ohio River.[1] Where the black population was large enough to form a social center of its own, Negroes and their friends could more easily provide for the education of colored children.  In settlements, however, in which just a few of them were found, some liberal-minded man usually asked the question why persons taxed to support a system of free schools should not share its benefits.  To strengthen their position