L6:3 History of the Institute for Colored Youth
Boarding School
The Institute of Colored Youth was originally started in 1838 as an agricultural boarding school near Upper Darby.
Funding came from Richard Humphrys, a Quaker who had made his fortune through the labor of enslaved Black people. It’s unclear if he freed the enslaved people who labored on his plantations. However, when he died, his will called for an institute to be developed to train Black teachers. To this aim he gave 1/10th of his fortune.
His will says in part:
“having for its object the benevolent design of instructing the descendants of the African Race in school learning, in the various branches of the mechanik arts and trades and in Agriculture: in order to prepare and fit and qualify them to act as teachers” (Conyers 50)
Night School, Apprenticeships
The boarding school eventually failed in the 1840s. The Society of Friends, who by this time had established many schools for Black students in Philadelphia, were eager to respond to the spirit of Humphreys will.
Trying again, in the late 1840s, they reached out to the Black community to best understand the needs of the community and how to meet those needs.
Black leaders pushed the Friends to provide apprenticeships during the day and literary education. A night school was started and teacher Ishmael Locke led a group of about 30 boys. Later John Rock taught the night school.
John Rock, Early Teacher at the ICY Night School, Image Public Domain
Conyers page 107
Day School
Black leaders continued to push for the establishment of a school for teachers, and by the early 1850s, the day school began.
The following is an excerpt from https://exhibits.library.villanova.edu/institute-colored-youth/institute-history
From the Villanova Website https://exhibits.library.villanova.edu/institute-colored-youth/institute-history
Free Tuition
The Managers initially planned to charge a modest tuition, but by 1853, young men and women attended the school for free. Students at the Institute were not required to become teachers, but, true to Humphrey’s bequest, the Managers insisted that such men and women “shall always have the preference over others who have no such intent.”
A Rigorous Curriculum
Despite Humphrey’s original modest vision of instructing students in “the mechanical arts,” Institute faculty held their students to high academic standards. They pursued a rigorous academic curriculum which included advanced mathematics, sciences, English, philosophy, various social sciences, and classical languages (both Greek and Latin). Members of the Senior Class of 1864, for example, were expected to achieve mastery in mathematics (including higher algebra, logarithms, geometry, and plane and spherical trigonometry), English, natural and mental philosophy, chemistry, and the classics (including Greek and Latin grammar, Virgil’s Aeneid, Caesar’s de Bello Gallico, and the New Testament in Greek).
Conyers page 109
Students also received religious instruction, as the Board of Managers considered “moral and religious training” to be even more important than “literary and scientific instruction.” Students were required at all times to maintain high standards of both academic performance and behavior; failure to do so, especially for three or more consecutive months, could result in expulsion. In order to graduate, students had to pass rigorous final examinations that placed heavy emphasis on mathematics and the classics. These oral examinations were held before the Board of Managers and were open to the public.
These public examinations were so popular that a hall had to be rented to accommodate the community. Conyers page 130
Public Examinations at the Institute for Colored Youth
from https://exhibits.library.villanova.edu/institute-colored-youth/institute-history
A Center for Community Instruction
Beyond the instruction of the next generation of black teachers, the Institute served as an invaluable community resource committed to enriching the lives of Philadelphians of color. Teachers began to amass a lending library, which in ten years had grown to include more than two thousand books, and opened a reading room which was “neatly fitted for the comfort and conveniences of those inclined to avail themselves in that way of the advantages of the Library.” In addition, the Institute held an annual lecture series featuring both teachers and other leading African American intellectuals, ministers, and activists of the time. The topics for the lectures were diverse, and included subjects in academics, religion, and current events.
A National Reputation and A Source of Price
When the Civil War broke out, the Institute for Colored Youth had grown to more than one hundred students and was rapidly gaining a reputation well beyond the city for academic excellence and for producing community leaders. In 1866, fourteen years after it first opened its doors, the Institute moved to a larger building in the city. That same year, the school proudly celebrated it first thirty-seven graduates, women and men who mastered the Institute’s rigorous curriculum and now stood ready to carry on that work. Most graduates went on to teach in schools in both the North and the South. Others became physicians, government employees, lawyers, and business owners. Even students who failed to graduate found opportunities to pursue teaching, business, or higher education.
Philadelphians of color enthusiastically embraced the Institute for Colored Youth and its students. By 1863, the school was part of the intellectual, cultural, and political fabric of the community. The Christian Recorder, a black newspaper published by Philadelphia’s African Methodist Episcopal Church, regularly reported on the public lectures sponsored by the Institute and the “interested colored audiences” who convened to hear the speakers. The newspaper also reported on the Institute’s annual Examinations and offered praise for the individual achievements of graduates at each Commencement. The school was a source of pride for the community and an important cultural and political institution.
“We are not without some cheering evidence that the benevolent design of our Institute is being appreciated by those for whom [sic] benefit it was established,” the Board of Managers reported in the minutes of a monthly meeting, taking apparent satisfaction in the esteemed position of the school in the African American community of Philadelphia. “We have found on the part of many of the most respectable of the colored people an increased disposition to aid our efforts, and from parents and others we often receive expressions of gratitude,” Board members added. Of their hope that their Institute’s uplift work would reach beyond the walls of the school, Board Members offered the example of a “mother of a pupil in addressing one of our Teachers [who] said, ‘You cannot think how proud I am of that Institute and how grateful I am to the Managers for its Library, its Schools, its lectures, and its colored teachers. Oh, it is a great thing for our people.’”
Managers also noted with pride the growing reputation of the school outside of Philadelphia. In May 1857 they reported that since its opening, the school was “beginning to attract the attention of intelligent persons in various parts of the country, and has been more frequently visited by strangers than heretofore.” Most surprising among the visitors, at least before the secession crisis and Civil War, were “several [white] persons from the Southern States.” One such visit came in 1856, when Henry Hutz, “a highly educated man” from Alabama came to examine the classes at the Institute. Like many whites, Hutz believed that African Americans were inferior to whites. But after listening to and questioning Institute teachers and students, he was “agreeably surprised at the progress of the scholars.”
In the fraught political climate that followed the Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott v. Sanford ruling that African Americans were not American citizens, the Institute for Colored Youth represented a bright spot and an opportunity for African American men and women to showcase their academic abilities. In response Henry Hutz’s visit, the Managers commented that “the theory of which he is the advocate will delight the slaveholder, but a well educated colored man is a powerful argument against it, and one so plain that all can comprehend it.” The men and women who graduated from the Institute stood as striking counter-evidence to Hutz’s racism, and after they graduated, they went on to agitate for equality in a number of ways, including educating their fellow African Americans, supporting the Union war effort, and lobbying for equal rights.
A Larger Facility
As early as 1861, before the Institute was even ten years old, the Managers were developing plans for better facilities for their students. At the conclusion of an extensive fundraising campaign among the city’s Quaker community, Institute managers were able to purchase a larger lot on Ninth and Shippen (now Bainbridge) Streets. The new Institute building opened on March 9, 1866; the new building could hold twice as many students as the original school and featured amenities such as a lecture hall and chemistry laboratory. The project cost nearly fifty thousand dollars.
Octavius Catto, ICY Graduate and Teacher, Image public domain
The post-Civil War years were full of changes at the Institute for Colored Youth. In March 1869, President Ulysses S. Grant appointed Institute Principal Ebenezer Bassett to the post of United States Minister to Haiti, making him the first African American diplomat in the nation’s history. The Managers appointed Fanny M. Jackson to replace Bassett, though this move caused some tension with Institute graduate and longtime teacher Octavius Catto, who had hoped the post would be offered to him. Jackson, a graduate of Oberlin College, had been teaching in the Institute since 1865.
Fanny Jackson Coppin, ICY Principal, Image Public Domain
https://exhibits.library.villanova.edu/institute-colored-youth/institute-history
Becoming Cheyney University
The Institute for Colored Youth remained in Philadelphia until the turn of the twentieth century. In 1902, the Managers purchased the farm of Quaker George Cheyney about twenty-five miles outside of the city. When the new facility opened on October 4, 1904, the Institute continued to emphasize its original mission of producing black teachers for black students. In 1914 the Managers agreed to change the name to the Cheyney Training School for Teachers. The school continues to exist today as Cheyney University of Pennsylvania.
Sources:
Charlene Conyers, A Living Legend: The History of Cheyney University, 1837-1951, Philadelphia, 1990; Harry C. Silcox, “Delay and Neglect: Negro Public Education in Antebellum Philadelphia, 1800-1860,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 97.4 (Oct., 1973): 444-464; G, “The Free Blacks, and the Will of Richard Humphreys,” The Friend; A Religious and Literary Journal, 6.15 (Jan., 1833): 113; “Objects and Regulations of the Institute for Colored Youth, with a list of the Officers and Students and the Annual Report of the Board of Managers, 1864,” Richard Humphreys Foundation Records, 1837-1982, Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College; “The Examination of the Pupils of the Philadelphia Institute for Colored Youth,” The Christian Recorder, May 11, 1861; “The Institute for Colored Youth,” The Christian Recorder, May 10, 1862; “The High School Examination,” The Christian Recorder, May 16, 1863; Institute for Colored Youth – Managers Minutes 1337-1855, May 18, 1857, Richard Humphreys Foundation Records, 1837-1982. Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College; Institute for Colored Youth – Managers Minutes 1337-1855, December 15, 1856, Richard Humphreys Foundation Records, 1837-1982. Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College.
Source: