Sean P. Riley

African-Americans and the Common School Era

1789: Massachusetts Education Act requires towns with at least 200 families to provide elementary schools

1800:  36 African-Americans ask Boston School Committee to create a separate school for African-American children

1806: Boston School Committee opens segregated school, The African School; funded by public funds and donations of philanthropists

1812: Boston School Committee agrees to incorporate African School into jurisdiction; provides $200 annually.

1815: Philanthropist, Abiel Smith, dies, leaves shares in turnpikes and bridges to school.

1815: Creation of the Smith School

1820s: Complaints about inferiority of African-American education by African-Americans

1833: Boston subcommittee reports quality of African-American schools in Boston, both in education and condition of the buildings, is inferior to other schools

1849: Roberts v. Massachusetts: Benjamin Roberts sues the state because his African-American daughter is denied from four “white” schools in Boston; loses case; argument becomes basis for Plessy v. Fergusson in 1896

1849: Petition of Sundry Colored Persons and Report of the Minority of the Committee call for the abolition of the Smith School

1855: Governor Henry Gardner signs bill into law; law states, “In determining the qualifications of scholars to be admitted into any public school, or any district school in this Commonwealth, no distinction shall be made on account of race, color, or religious opinions of the applicant or scholar.”

1855: Smith School is closed