cedent for other such schools which
were established in 1833, and 1841.[1] Harrisburg had a colored school
early in the century, but upon the establishment of the Lancastrian
school in that city in the thirties, the colored as well as the
white children were required to attend it or pay for their education
themselves.[2]

[Footnote 1: _Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed_., 1871, p. 379.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid_., p. 379.]

In 1834 the legislature of Pennsylvania established a system of public
schools, but the claims of the Negroes to public education were
neither guaranteed nor denied.[1] The school law of 1854, however,
seems to imply that the benefits of the system had always been
understood to extend to colored children.[2] This measure provided
that the comptrollers and directors of the several school districts of
the State could establish within their respective districts separate
schools for Negro and mulatto children wherever they could be so
located as to accommodate twenty or more pupils. Another provision was
that wherever such schools should "be established and kept open four
months in the year" the directors and comptrollers should not be
compelled to admit colored pupils to any other schools of that
district. The law was interpreted to mean that wherever such
accommodations were not provided the children of Negroes could attend
the other schools. Such was the case in the rural districts where a
few colored children often found it pleasant and profitable to attend
school with their white friends.[3] The children of Robert B. Purvis,
however, were turned away from the public schools of Philadelphia
on the ground that special educational facilities for them had been
provided.[4] It was not until 1881 that Pennsylvania finally swept
away all the distinctions of caste from her public school system.

[Footnote 1: _Purdon's Digest of the Laws of Pa_., p. 291, sections
1-23.]

[Footnote 2: Stroud and Brightly, _Purdon's Digest_, p. 1064, section
23.]

[Footnote 3: Wickersham, _History of Education in Pa_., p. 253.]

[Footnote 4: Wigham, _The Antislavery Cause in America_, p. 103.]

As the colored population of New Jersey was never large, there was not
sufficient concentration of such persons in that State to give rise
to the problems which at times confronted the benevolent people of
Pennsylvania. Great as had been the reaction, the Negroes of New
Jersey never entirely lost the privilege of attending scho