classes, and provided lectures for Negroes ambitious to do advanced work.  Measures were taken to establish an academy for colored girls, and a teacher was engaged.  But these noble efforts put forth so near the border States soon provoked firm opposition from the proslavery element.  Some of the students had gone so far in the manifestation of their zeal that the institution was embarrassed by the charge of promoting the social equality of the races.[2] Rather than remain in Cincinnati under restrictions, the reform element of the institution moved to the more congenial Western Reserve where a nucleus of youth and their instructors had assumed the name of Oberlin College.  This school did so much for the education of Negroes before the Civil War that it was often spoken of as an institution for the education of the people of color.

[Footnote 1:  Ibid., p. 43.]

[Footnote 2:  First Annual Report of the American Anti-Slavery Society, p. 43.]

Interest in the higher education of the neglected race, however, was not confined to a particular commonwealth.  Institutions of other States were directing their attention to this task.  Among others were a school in New York City founded by a clergyman to offer Negroes an opportunity to study the classics,[1] New York Central College at McGrawville, Oneida Institute conducted by Beriah Green at Whitesboro, Thetford Academy of Vermont, and Union Literary Institute in the center of the communities of freedmen transplanted to Indiana.  Many other of our best institutions were opening their doors to students of African descent.  By 1852 colored students had attended the Institute at Easton, Pennsylvania; the Normal School of Albany, New York; Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine; Rutland College, Vermont; Jefferson College, Pennsylvania; Athens College, Athens, Ohio; Franklin College, New Athens, Ohio; and Hanover College near Madison, Indiana.  Negroes had taken courses at the Medical School of the University of New York; the Castleton Medical School in Vermont; the Berkshire Medical School, Pittsfield, Massachusetts; the Rush Medical School in Chicago; the Eclectic Medical School of Philadelphia; the Homeopathic College of Cleveland; and the Medical School of Harvard University.  Colored preachers had been educated in the Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania; the Dartmouth Theological School; and the Theological Seminary of Charleston, South Carolina.[2]

[Footnote 1:  Simmons, Men of Mark, p. 530.]

[Footnote 2:  These facts are taken from M.R.  Delany’s The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States Practically Considered, published in 1852; the Reports of the Antislavery and Colonization Societies, and The African Repository.]