these benevolent men referred to the rapid progress of the belated people, many of whom within less than a generation from their emergence from slavery had become intelligent, virtuous, and respectable persons, and in not a few cases had accumulated considerable wealth.[2] Those who insisted that children of African blood should be debarred from the regular public schools had for their defense the so-called inequality of the races.  Some went so far as to concede the claims made for the progressive blacks, and even to praise those of their respective communities.[3] But great as their progress had been, the advocates of the restriction of their educational privileges considered it wrong to claim for them equality with the Caucasian race.  They believed that society would suffer from an intermingling of the children of the two races.

[Footnote 1:  Hickok, The Negro in Ohio, ch. iii.; and Boone, History of Education in Indiana, p. 237.]

[Footnote 2:  Foote, The Schools of Cincinnati, p. 93.]

[Footnote 3:  Ibid., p. 92.]

In Indiana the problem of educating Negroes was more difficult.  R.G.  Boone says that, “nominally for the first few years of the educational experience of the State, black and white children had equal privileges in the few schools that existed."[1] But this could not continue long.  Abolitionists were moving the country, and freedmen soon found enemies as well as friends in the Ohio valley.  Indiana, which was in 1824 so very “solicitous for a system of education which would guard against caste distinction,” provided in 1837 that the white inhabitants alone of each congressional township should constitute the local school corporation.[2] In 1841 a petition was sent to the legislature requesting that a reasonable share of the school fund be appropriated to the education of Negroes, but the committee to which it was referred reported that legislation on that subject was inexpedient.[3] With the exception of prohibiting the immigration of such persons into that State not much account of them was taken until 1853.  Then the legislature amended the law authorizing the establishment of schools in townships so as to provide that in all enumerations the children of color should not be taken, that the property of the blacks and mulattoes should not be taxed for school purposes, and that their children should not derive any benefit from the common schools of that State.[4] This provision had really been incorporated into the former law, but was omitted by oversight on the part of the engrossing clerk.[5]

[Footnote 1:  Boone, History of Ed. in Indiana, p. 237.]

[Footnote 2:  Laws of a General Nature of the State of Indiana, 1837, p. 15.]

[Footnote 3:  Boone, History of Education in Indiana, p. 237.]

[Footnote 4:  Laws of a General Nature of the State of Indiana, 1855, p. 161.]

[Footnote 5:  Boone, History of Education in Indiana, p. 237.]