Graduates included the violinist and composer Walter F. Craig, the leader of a pre-eminent society orchestra that performed for both Black and white audiences.
“These were not just teachers, not just students, these were important players in the social infrastructure of New York City, and they represent this really broad swath of interests,” Mr. Washington said. “They were abolitionists, they were ministers, they were orators, they were musicians, they were military people.”
The school’s curriculum for boys most likely included reading, writing, math, science and some arts, as well as rudimentary practical skills that “would help children get service-oriented jobs that were in the interest of the dominant culture,” said Cynthia Copeland, a public historian who has done extensive research on Seneca Village and other Black communities of 19th-century New York. Girls’ instruction probably included domestic subjects like sewing, cooking and etiquette, as well as lessons on how to read, write and speak.
“The most important thing to take away was how to comport yourself, because perceptions of the Black community were very important,” Ms. Copeland said, adding that it was “likely that Black history was introduced in those spaces but probably not called Black history.”
In 1873, New York State passed a law prohibiting school officials from denying children access to any public school “on account of race or color.” But the law was not uniformly enforced, and the Black community itself held varying views about whether its children should share schools with white students.
By the early 1880s, according to Mr. Washington, the State Legislature appeared ready to let the city Board of Education absorb its few “colored” schools into its overall system. This proposal prompted Garnet to join a mass protest calling on the board to either retain Black teachers as equals with white ones or leave the Black schools alone.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nytimes.com
