Page:Journal of Negro History, vol. 7.djvu/480



race, none the less appreciable from the fact that their interest and value seem circumscribed locally. That they are so limited I do not believe, but think of each as the centre of an ever widening, circling influence for good. To illustrate:

Paul Cuffee was born at Cuttyhunk, Mass., in 1758; was an early defender of the rights of colored men; when the selectmen of the Town of Dartmouth, refused to admit colored children to the public schools, and to make separate provision for their education, he refused to pay his school taxes, was imprisoned, and when liberated, built a school house at his own expense, on his own land, employed a teacher at his own expense, and then opened his school without race discrimination, a privilege which his white neighbors availed themselves of as his school was more convenient and equally as good as those of the town. The result was colored children ceased to be proscribed along educational lines. He was a ship owner, builder and export trader. His story has been published at length, in one of our dailies, with all the documents in the case. It seemed to me that such stories would be of general as well as local interest. If you agree with me in this, Mr. Jourdain would without doubt forward the clipping to you.

The first colored school-teacher in Boston, was Prince Sanders, Secretary African Lodge F. & A. M., the first Lodge of colored Masons in America. He taught a colored school in the basement of the old Joy Street Church from 1809 to 1812. The first colored school, private, was opened in 1798, at the residence of Primus Hall, corner of West Cedar and Revere Streets, Boston, and was taught by a white man, by name, Sylvester. Its curriculum was limited to the three "R's."

I am sending you in mail with this a pamphlet copy of "Proceedings" etc., on pp. 12, 16, 17, you will find statements of services given by Prince Hall, of general as well as of local interest and value.

Yours sincerely,