Manuscript minute book recording the board meetings of this school originally founded for the education of African-American girls by Myrtilla Miner (1815-1864) abolitionist, educator, and pioneer in the education of African American women. The entries are recorded in a variety of secretarial hands and the volume is further enriched by the inclusion of pasted in ephemeral items from the school including graduation programs, broadsheets, etc. Myrtilla Miner was born in Brookfield in central New York and developed a desire for independence which led her to school teaching, she was educated at the Female Domestic Seminary at Clinton, New York, but a painful spinal ailment led her to transfer to Clover Street Seminary in Rochester, where she stayed on briefly as a teacher in 1844. In 1845 -46 she taught at the Richmond Street School in Providence, Rhode Island. She journeyed in 1847 to Mississippi where she spent an unhappy year teaching at the Newton Female Institute in Whitesville. She was appalled by the condition and treatment of slaves. She came to believe that in education lay the salvation of African Americans, and when her request to instruct them was refused she returned to New York in 1849. She was again very ill and during her illness vowed that if she recovered she would devote herself to the cause of the slaves. That year, at the home of a friend in Farmington, New York, she met two abolitionists, Gen. William Chaplin, of Washington, D.C., and Asa B. Smith, who urged her to open a school for Negroes in the nation’s capital. Many were skeptical of the plan mindful of the persecution Prudence Crandall had undergone in Connecticut for a similar attempt in the 1830’s, even Frederick Douglass at first warned against it. Henry Ward Beecher was enthusiastic and urged Miss Miner to begin raising funds. With one hundred dollars contributed by a Pennsylvania Quaker, Mrs. Ednah Thomas, she went to Washington, rented a room, and on Dec. 3, 1851, opened the Colored Girls School. Enrollment quickly climbed from six to forty. Miss Miner charged a small tuition and drew pupils from the more well-to-do families. Local opposition required three moves within two years, she ignored threats, taught the girls to disregard taunts, and on occasion brandished a pistol to hold off hostile mobs. The school had strong supporters, including Senator William Seward, President Franklin Pierce’s family visited it. Harriet Beecher Stowe gave $ 1000.00 from the royalties of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, members of the Society of Friends’ particularly in the Philadelphia area contributed heavily. In 1853 a three acre lot and building on the outskirts of town were purchased and in 1856 the school was placed in the care of trustees, including Henry Ward Beecher, Johns Hopkins, and Samuel Rhoads. A campaign to raise funds for a larger building was launched, along with the growth and expansion of the school came increased local opposition. A former mayor of Washington bitterly attacked the school in the National Intelligencer, (May 6, 1857).  Despite distractions, Miss Miner conducted her school with both academic rigor and creative imagination. The school gave perhaps the only education beyond the elementary level available to Washington’s African American population before the Civil War. A basic one year curriculum covered a wide range of subjects. Although the school included primary and “domestic economy” departments, the major emphasis was on training teachers, and by 1853 six former students were conducting schools of their own. Her underlying and fundamental purpose was the abolition of slavery. In 1858, noting the hundreds of school visitors, she wrote: “Visitors… from all parts of the country…many of them entertaining the idea that the colored race are incapable of receiving a high order of mental and moral cultivation, will, with this example before them, be constrained to admit that these people can be elevated by proper education and kind treatment; and many will return to their homes more disposed to aid in a movement calculated to relieve our country from a vast increasing evil.” Myrtilla Miner’s health worsened and in 1855 she left the school to attempt a cure. Thereafter the major load was carried by others, notably Lydia Mann (Horace Mann’s sister), and Emily Howland, later a noted educator and suffragist. Miss Miner continued to work on behalf of the school primarily by raising funds, by 1857-58 the school was effectively in charge of Emily Howland. Her continued illness and the approach of war forced the closing of the school in 1860, Miner went to California to seek a more congenial climate. Her friends in congress secured the incorporation of the school as the Institution for the Education of Colored Youth, but it was not active again during her lifetime. In 1864 Miss Miner was thrown from a carriage near Petaluma, California and suffered a pulmonary hemorrhage. A return voyage to the east did not help her condition and in December she died in Washington, D.C. The school she founded functioned for a time as the Institution for the Education of Colored Youth, before being renamed the Miner Normal School after the Civil War. From 1871 to 1876 the school was associated with Howard University, and in 1879 merged with the Washington public school system; the Board retaining control of its property, it was renamed in 1929 Miner Teacher’s College. A year after the Supreme Court decision of 1954 outlawing school segregation it was merged with Wilson Teachers College to form the District of Columbia Teachers College. In 1976, this was incorporated into the University of the District of Columbia.  The present volume details the history of the organization and operation of the school primarily in the period after Miss Miner’s death. The volume contains minutes of board meetings detailing the school’s nascence, financial reports, early union with Howard University, construction of a new school building and the early years of educating African Americans, after reorganization as The Miner Normal School. The minutes describe various changes to the school’s programs creation of a kindergarden program, plans for a proposed industrial school, etc. The minutes detail the active involvement of Frederick Douglass in the school as a board member from 1878 – 1887, the year at which the present volume ends. The volume also covers the period of the appointment of Lucy E. Moten as principal.  The present volume commences in 1863 with a manuscript transcription of the Act to Incorporate the Institution for the Education of Colored Youth in the District of Columbia, dated March 3, 1863. The act names Henry Addison, John C. Underwood, George C. Abbott, William H. Channing, Nancy M. Johnson, and Myrtilla Miner as the corporate body. It is followed by the minutes of the first meeting of the Corporators of the Institution in June of 1863. The Institution struggled to get started, raising funds, and acquiring title to the property upon which the Institution was to operate, which was finally achieved in 1865. New board members were elected including Rev. Henry Highland Garnet, an African American minister. In 1867 the board decided to apply to Gen. O. O. Howard for a loan to erect a school building upon the Institution’s property. Plans were undertaken to form an association between the Institution and the newly formed Howard University. This consisted in part of the formation of a Normal Department in Howard University, to be conducted by Maria Mann, and her chair endowed as “The Miner Professorship,” and the Institution for the Education of Colored Youth to pay her salary. The Institution’s first by-laws were adopted in January, 1869. By 1875 the enrollment in the Institution’s Normal Department had grown to 105, fifty men and fifty-five women. The trustees of the Institution decided to terminate the association with Howard University early in 1876 because the board felt that the association was not conducive to the mission of the school, which was the education of African American elementary school teachers. It was decided to “reorganize the Miner School making thereof a Normal School of the highest obtainable grade…” The board decided that in pursuit of this aim that a suitable property within the District be located and that henceforth the name of the Institution would be changed to the Miner Normal School, in memory of its founder. The school was removed from Howard University to a temporary location at 1613 P Street. A lot was purchased in 1877 on 17th street between P and Q streets upon which the board proposed to erect a new school building. The new building was dedicated October 18, 1877. In January of 1878 Frederick Douglass joined the executive committee of the school. The use of Miner Hall was granted to Dr. (Alexander) Crummell on Sundays. In 1879 the school adopted “the same course of study proscribed for the Washington Normal School, making ours identical with that.” It was also agreed that the Miner School would furnish monthly reports to the Trustees of Colored Schools. In 1883 on the recommendation of Frederick Douglass, Lucy E. Moten (1851-1933), pioneer African American educator, was named principal of the school, which post she held until 1920. During her tenure she trained nearly all the teachers employed in Washington’s “colored” elementary schools for nearly four decades. She introduced highly professional and rigorous standards and made the entrance requirements and examinations the same as those used in “white” schools.  An important volume detailing the efforts to educate African Americans in the post Civil War period.

 

References:American National Biography, vol. 16, pp., 8-9Appleton’s Cyclopedia of American Biography, vol. IV, p. 336Dictionary of American Biography, vol. VII, pp., 23-24Notable American Women, vol. II, pp. 547-548; pp., 591-592