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      Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

      Names: Baumgartner, Kabria, 1982– author.

      Title: In pursuit of knowledge : black women and educational activism in antebellum America / Kabria Baumgartner.

      Description: New York : New York University Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “‘In Pursuit of Knowledge’ explores Black women and educational activism in Antebellum America”—Provided by publisher.

      Identifiers: LCCN 2019009450 | ISBN 9781479823116 (cloth)

      Subjects: LCSH: African American women educators—History—19th century. | African American women political activists—History—19th century. | African Americans—Education—History—19th century. | African Americans—Social conditions—19th century. | United States—Race relations—History—19th century.

      Classification: LCC LC2741 .B38 2019 | DDC 371.829/96073—dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019009450

      For Ella and Maya

      CONTENTS

List of Figures

Introduction: Purposeful Womanhood

PART I. WHAT OUR MINDS HAVE LONG DESIRED

1 Prayer and Protest at the Canterbury Female Seminary

      2 Race and Reform at the Young Ladies’ Domestic Seminary

      3 Women Teachers in New York City

      PART II. GOD PROTECT THE RIGHT

      4 Race, Gender, and the American High School

      5 Black Girlhood and Equal School Rights

      6 Character Education and the Antebellum Classroom

      Conclusion: Going Forward

      Acknowledgments

      Appendix A. List of Black Students at the Canterbury Female Seminary in Connecticut

      Appendix B. List of Black Students at the Young Ladies’ Domestic Seminary in New York

      Appendix C. List of Black Families in the Northeast

      Appendix D. Physical Attacks on Black Schools in the Northeast, 1830–1845

      Notes

      Index

      About the Author

       FIGURES

I.1. “Colored scholars excluded from schools”

1.1. Sarah Harris

1.2. Prudence Crandall

1.3. “Colored Schools Broken Up in the Free States”

      2.1. Hiram Huntington Kellogg

      2.2. Joanna Turpin Howard

      2.3. Serena deGrasse’s painting

      3.1. Rosetta Morrison’s school advertisement

      4.1. Sarah Parker Remond

      4.2. Petition of Eunice Ross

      5.1. William Cooper Nell

      5.2. Edwin F. Howard

      5.3. J. Imogen Howard

      5.4. Adeline T. Howard

      5.5. Edwin Clarence Howard

      6.1. Friendship album of Mary Anne Dickerson

      6.2. Charlotte Forten

       Introduction: Purposeful Womanhood

      In the spring of 1833, twenty young African American women trekked to the Canterbury Female Seminary located in the town of Canterbury, Connecticut. They were overjoyed to partake in this opportunity for advanced schooling. But white Canterbury residents were far from joyful; in fact, they sought to drive these young women out of the town. After seventeen months of continuous harassment, abuse, and even violence, white residents got their wish as the Canterbury Female Seminary closed in September 1834. This incident marked yet another unfortunate case of northern racist violence, but it was more than that too: it reveals a larger, more complex story of African American girls and women in pursuit of knowledge in nineteenth-century America.

      The controversy surrounding the Canterbury Female Seminary galvanized African American women activists, who penned essays on the value of education, set their sights on building schools, and entered the teaching profession. Sarah Mapps Douglass, an African American teacher and school proprietor in Philadelphia, was certain that education opened a path to civil rights and economic betterment. In a public letter, she offered a powerful motto to guide African American girls and women: “Be courageous; put your trust in the God of the oppressed; and go forward!”1 In her estimation, educated and pious African American girls and women ought to live their lives with a sense of purpose.

      In Pursuit of Knowledge examines the educational activism of Douglass and other African American women and girls living in the antebellum Northeast. “Activism” is broadly defined here to capture the forms of mobilization and resistance sometimes overlooked in

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