Publication of the African Free School Archives

In 1785, the New York Manumission Society, which included such prominent New Yorkers as Alexander Hamilton, founded the African Free School to educate newly freed slaves and their children. The school instructed students of both genders in arithmetic, grammar, penmanship, geography, and business. The African Free School was notable at the time for regularly hiring black teachers and the school’s graduates included the first African American to become a practicing physician and one of the first African Americans to teach at a predominantly white college.

The New York Historical Society (NYHS) owns four volumes of the African Free School’s records dating from 1817 to 1832 which include samples of student work, observations of the Board of Trustees, and by-laws. These intriguing artifacts offer a vivid portrait of the hopes and struggles of the free black community in the early nineteenth century. NYHS will publish the four volumes online in an educational website. Anna May Duane, assistant professor of English at the University of Connecticut, Thomas Thurston of the Gilder Lehrman Center for American History at Yale University, and David Blight, professor of history at Yale University, are working with Louise Mirrer, NYHS President and CEO and Jean Ashton, Vice President and Library Director, to produce scholarly commentary for the website. NYHS will also publish a print version of one of the volumes that will include a teaching plan and an extensive bibliography for educators and researchers.