The formal education of Black New Yorkers began with the Manumission Society’s African Free Schools, which first opened in 1787. Though the city was at the forefront of Black education, it would take decades to break down barriers to higher education, and schools, students, teachers, and benefactors were under threat of racial violence. This virtual program will examine the early history of Black schools in the city and neighboring Brooklyn, and the impact the evolving political discourse – and violence – around slavery had on them. This discussion will be hosted not in New York, but near the small town of Canaan, New Hampshire, which was the site of a horrific act of racial violence in 1835: the destruction of the Noyes Academy, the first racially-integrated college preparatory school in the country.
- African Free School Collection (New-York Historical Society)
- The Battle over Abolition (Museum of the City of New York)
- Mabee, Carleton (1979). Black Education in New York State: From Colonial to Modern Times
- Pride and Prejudice at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University
- The Charles A. Dorsey Community School P.S. 67
- Canaan Historical Society Noyes Academy Study Group
