colored population in the Northern cities."[2] As such positions
required considerable skill and intelligence, these laborers had of
necessity acquired a large share of useful knowledge. The favorable
circumstances of the Negroes in certain liberal southern cities like
Charleston were the cause of their return from the North to the South,
where they often had a better opportunity for mental as well
as economic improvement.[3] The return of certain Negroes from
Philadelphia to Petersburg, Virginia, during the first decade of the
nineteenth century, is a case in evidence.[4]

[Footnote 1: Simmons, _Men of Mark_, p. 1078.]

[Footnote 2: _Niles Register_, vol. xlix., p. 40.]

[Footnote 3: _Notions of the Americans_, p. 26.]

[Footnote 4: Wright, _Views of Society and Manners in America_, p.
73.]

The successful strivings of the race in the District of Columbia
furnish us with striking examples of Negroes making educational
progress. When two white teachers, Henry Potter and Mrs. Haley,
invited black children to study with their white pupils, the colored
people gladly availed themselves of this opportunity.[1] Mrs. Maria
Billings, the first to establish a real school for Negroes in
Georgetown, soon discovered that she had their hearty support. She had
pupils from all parts of the District of Columbia, and from as far as
Bladensburg, Maryland. The tuition fee in some of these schools was
a little high, but many free blacks of the District of Columbia
were sufficiently well established to meet these demands. The rapid
progress made by the Bell and Browning families during this period
was of much encouragement to the ambitious colored people, who were
laboring to educate their children.[2]

[Footnote 1: _Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed._, 1871, pp. 195
_et seq._]

[Footnote 2: _Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed._, 1871, p. 195.]

The city Negroes, however, were learning to do more than merely attend
accessible elementary schools. In 1807 George Bell, Nicholas
Franklin, and Moses Liverpool, former slaves, built the first colored
schoolhouse in the District of Columbia. Just emerging from bondage,
these men could not teach themselves, but employed a white man to
take charge of the school.[1] It was not a success. Pupils of color
thereafter attended the school of Anne Maria Hall, a teacher from
Prince George County, Maryland, and those of teachers who instructed
white children.[2] The ambitious Negroes of the D