public schools in 1825.[4] The fact that some of the Negroes were able and willing to share the responsibility of enlightening their people caused a larger number of philanthropists to come to the rescue of those who had to depend on charity.  Furthermore, of the many achievements claimed for the colored schools of Philadelphia none were considered more significant than that they produced teachers qualified to carry on this work.  Eleven of the sixteen colored schools in Philadelphia in 1822 were taught by teachers of African descent.  In 1830 the system was practically in the hands of Negroes.[5]

[Footnote 1:  Turner, The Negro in Pennsylvania, p. 129.]

[Footnote 2:  Ibid., p. 130.]

[Footnote 3:  Special Report of the U.S.  Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 377.]

[Footnote 4:  Proceedings of the American Convention, etc., 1825, p. 13.]

[Footnote 5:  Proceedings of the Am.  Convention, etc., 1830, p.8; and Wickersham, History of Education in Pennsylvania, p. 253.]

The statistics of later years show how successful these early efforts had been.  By 1849 the colored schools of Philadelphia had developed to the extent that they seemed like a system.  According to the Statistical Inquiry into the Condition of Colored People in and about Philadelphia, published that year, there were 1643 children of color attending well-regulated schools.  The larger institutions were mainly supported by State and charitable organizations of which the Society of Friends and the Pennsylvania Abolition Society were the most important.  Besides supporting these institutions, however, the intelligent colored men of Philadelphia had maintained smaller schools and organized a system of lyceums and debating clubs, one of which had a library of 1400 volumes.  Moreover, there were then teaching in the colored families and industrial schools of Philadelphia many men and women of both races.[1] Although these instructors restricted their work to the teaching of the rudiments of education, they did much to help the more advanced schools to enlighten the Negroes who came to that city in large numbers when conditions became intolerable for the free people of color in the slave States.  The statistics of the following decade show unusual progress.  In the year 1859 there were in the colored public schools of Philadelphia, 1031 pupils; in the charity schools, 748; in the benevolent schools, 211; in private schools, 331; in all, 2321, whereas in 1849 there were only 1643.[2]

[Footnote 1:  About the middle of the nineteenth century colored schools of various kinds arose in Philadelphia.  With a view to giving Negroes industrial training their friends opened “The School for the Destitute” at the House of Industry in 1848.  Three years later Sarah Luciana was teaching a school of seventy youths at this House of Industry, and the Sheppard School, another industrial institution, was