The advocates of useful education for the degraded race had more to say about training in the mechanic arts.  Such instruction, however, was not then a new thing to the blacks of the South, for they had from time immemorial been the trustworthy artisans of that section.  The aim then was to give them such education as would make them intelligent workmen and develop in them the power to plan for themselves.  In the North, where the Negroes had been largely menial servants, adequate industrial education was deemed necessary for those who were to be liberated.[1] Almost every Northern colored school of any consequence then offered courses in the handicrafts.  In 1784 the Quakers of Philadelphia employed Sarah Dwight to teach the colored girls sewing.[2] Anthony Benezet provided in his will that in the school to be established by his benefaction the girls should be taught needlework.[3] The teachers who took upon themselves the improvement of the free people of color of New York City regarded industrial training as one of their important tasks.[4]

[Footnote 1:  See the Address of the Am.  Conv. of Abolition Societies, 1794; ibid., 1795; ibid., 1797 et passim.]

[Footnote 2:  Wickersham, History of Ed. in Pa., p. 249.]

[Footnote 3:  Special Report of the U.S.  Com. of Ed., 1869, p. 375.]

[Footnote 4:  Andrews, History of the New York African Free Schools, p. 20.]

None urged this duty upon the directors of these schools more persistently than the antislavery organizations.  In 1794 the American Convention of Abolition Societies recommended that Negroes be instructed in “those mechanic arts which will keep them most constantly employed and, of course, which will less subject them to idleness and debauchery, and thus prepare them for becoming good citizens of the United States."[1] Speaking repeatedly on this wise the Convention requested the colored people to let it be their special care to have their children not only to work at useful trades but also to till the soil.[2] The early abolitionists believed that this was the only way the freedmen could learn to support themselves.[3] In connection with their schools the antislavery leaders had an Indenturing Committee to find positions for colored students who had the advantages of industrial education.[4] In some communities slaves were prepared for emancipation by binding them out as apprentices to machinists and artisans until they learned a trade.

[Footnote 1:  Proceedings of the American Convention, 1794, p. 14.]

[Footnote 2:  Ibid., 1795, p. 29; ibid., 1797, pp. 12, 13, and 31.]

[Footnote 3:  Ibid., 1797, p. 31.]

[Footnote 4:  Ibid., 1818, p. 9.]