A Few of Our Favorite Things, Part Eleven: “Teaching with Capital Success”

Like many of my colleagues, I find it impossible to choose just one favorite thing from our collection. Nevertheless, I’d like to shine a spotlight on a humble but intriguing item, an annual report. Since I trained as an archivist, it’s not surprising that I have a soft spot for institutional records. Printed institutional reports are intended to circulate widely, allowing institutions to amplify their image, aspirations, and goals. The Library Company’s African Americana Collection is rich in printed annual reports, minutes, and constitutions of anti-slavery societies as well as black-run institutions, such as churches, charities, and schools. Objects and Regulations of the Institute for Colored Youth, … for the Year 1860 (Philadelphia, 1860) exemplifies how very informative these publications can be.

The Institute for Colored Youth (ICY), Philadelphia’s only high school for African Americans prior to the Civil War, became the institution of choice for many of the city’s elite black families. Through the bequest of Quaker Richard Humphreys, the school was founded in 1837 for the express purpose of educating African American youth, especially for careers as teachers. Located on a farm on the outskirts of the city, the school taught mechanical and industrial arts, a curriculum which proved unpopular and resulted in the school’s closure in 1846. It reopened as a preparatory and high school in 1852 in Philadelphia with a redesigned curriculum and a staff of educated, highly trained black teachers, allowing African American students to attain a quality classical education while avoiding the racial prejudice they often encountered under the tutelage of white teachers in public schools.

The list of teachers demonstrates the talent that ICY was able to attract. Ebenezer D. Bassett, who graduated from the Connecticut State Normal School and studied at Yale, presided over the school from 1857 to 1869, leaving this post at the request of President Ulysses S. Grant to serve as U.S. minister to Haiti. Among other illustrious educators in 1860 were Sarah Mapps Douglass, an abolitionist and teacher since the 1820s, and her cousin, Grace A. Mapps, who became one of the first African American women to receive a degree from a four-year college in the United States when she graduated from McGrawville College in 1852. Octavius V. Catto, an ICY alumnus and civil rights activist, rose from assistant teacher to principal of the high school’s male department before his life was cut short by an assassin’s bullet during the racial turmoil of the 1871 Philadelphia city elections.

 

ICY’s rigorous curriculum encompassed a wide range of subjects including math, literature, history, anatomy, and Latin. The 1860 annual report provides a rare glimpse of the 19th century curriculum and textbooks used at an African American school. Some of these books are in the Library Company’s collection, allowing researchers to examine the same textbook titles that ICY students used.

What I find most striking is the list of alumni and their demographic information, which concludes the 1860 annual report. The list is indicative of the great range of social status within Philadelphia’s black community. The occupations of parents and guardians, ranging from whitewasher to washer woman and from painter to physician, reflect the importance of ICY for elevating students’ economic class or for solidifying hard-won social attainment. Affirmations about students’ characters, such as their industriousness and honesty, speak to the scrutiny that African Americans faced in constantly having to demonstrate their worthiness of respect, citizenship, and civil rights. All in all, the annual report inspired hope that students were well equipped to achieve “capital success” after leaving the nurturing environment of the Institute for Colored Youth.

Krystal Appiah
Curator of African American History

A Few of Our Favorite Things, Part Ten: Portraits of American Women

Every time we add another portrait to the Portraits of American Women file in ImPAC  it’s a cause for celebration. As Curator of Women’s History, I find that adding to the file is my favorite thing. As a whole, it provides glimpses of so many women’s lives: famous women, infamous women, and ordinary women too. For me, the total is more than the sum of the parts.

In 2013, we topped 300 portraits. They depict murder victims and perpetrators, presidents’ and diplomats’ wives, writers, missionaries, actresses, thieves, famous beauties (some of whom were fictitious), girls who were held captive, teachers, adulteresses, and divorcees. There are nice girls who died pious deaths (such as Sarah Fellowes Davis) and mean girls who spread harmful gossip (like Elizabeth Ellet). All of the portraits appeared in books and periodicals before 1861.

I try not to have favorites. Each one can be my favorite-of-the-moment, depending on what I’m doing. When a reader is interested in the history of the classification of children who are developmentally challenged as “imbeciles,” I think of Beckie and Bessie:

When I want to consider the actress Charlotte Cushman, famous for her performances as Romeo in Romeo and Juliet, I can juxtapose a caricature of her with a “straight” portrait:

This past summer we acquired the first volume of Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing Room Companion, in which the caricature appears. To our immense surprise, the original 1851 issues of Gleason’s include the article associated with that caricature, but the reprint of the volume three years later did not! Had we not gone looking for it to reproduce in the “Cushmania” section of our next exhibition “That’s So Gay: Outing Early America,” we would never have realized that the reprint edition (a copy of which is held by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania) did not include the remarkable issue in which the reviewer discusses Cushman’s portrayal of Romeo. Cushman was enormously successful as an actress who performed in male roles, and off-stage she apparently was quite a Romeo as well. When she was living in Rome after retiring from the stage, she typically had a young female protégé as well as a peer relationship with a female partner.

One of my favorite aspects of the Portraits of American Women file is the chance juxtaposition of women, thanks to its alphabetic arrangement: Cynthia Taggart (invalid poet), Sarah Louisa Taylor (exemplary Christian), H. Trusta (novelist who wrote under a nom de plume), Sojourner Truth (itinerant preacher), Tshusick (itinerant con artist), Ruth Tucker (patient at Pennsylvania Hospital), and so forth. They are all wonderful – each in her own way.

Connie King
Curator of Women's History

 

A Few of Our Favorite Things, Part Nine: Thanksgiving 1864 – A Spectacle of Giving

Today, November 26, 2013, is the 150th anniversary of what many regard as the first official national celebration of Thanksgiving, as proclaimed by Abraham Lincoln.  In fact, Lincoln proclaimed many days of national thanksgiving during his time as president, as did others before him.  It was not until the country was involved in another great war that Thanksgiving was officially established as the fourth Thursday in November. Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed it into law in December 1941, a few weeks after our entry into World War 2. 

It is, I think, worth noting that, during two of the most violent episodes in our nation’s history, our leaders saw fit to focus some of their energy on bringing our citizenry together in appreciation of what we have, and in acknowledgement of the wants of others.  A story from Thanksgiving 1864 most powerfully speaks to me of the meaning of the holiday, as Lincoln intended it, and we hold a pamphlet in our collection that tells that story.  It is one of my “favorite things.”

Report of the Committee on Providing a Thanksgiving Dinner for the Soldiers and Sailors was presented by the Union League Club of New York in December 1864 and published in 1865.  It tells of an almost incomprehensible feat of philanthropy accomplished by that League in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, held that year on November 24th.  In their meeting on November 3, the League decided to raise funds and food to ensure that all Union troops then in battle and lying in hospital would have a feast on Thanksgiving.  Which was in three weeks.  In the middle of a war.  In the middle of the 19th century. 

In those three weeks, the Union League of New York collected over $57,000 in monetary donations (minus $47.50 in counterfeit bills).  They also received hundreds of thousands of pounds of in-kind donations.  Contributions came in from as far away as Michigan.  Furthermore, in what seems to me like an absolute impossibility, they managed to distribute the food to the troops in time for Thanksgiving.  The Report states that the League “received and forwarded at least 225,000 lbs. poultry. This was in addition to 148,586 pounds purchased by the Committee, and was in addition also to an enormous quantity of cakes, doughnuts, gingerbread, pickles, preserved fruits, apples, vegetables, and all the other things which go to make up a Northern Thanksgiving Dinner.”  The Report also makes clear that this was all done despite “the failing of [the Union League of] Philadelphia to co-operate.”

One of many pages listing the in-kind contributions received by the Union League of New York.

The report includes some anecdotes about specific contributions (“The savings of two little children, from their weekly allowance, $2”) and a few letters from grateful recipients.  One of the most charming was written from Petersburg, Virginia, by a member of the 8th Pennsylvania Cavalry, to a Mrs. C.H.  He wrote, “In the final distribution of the delicacies … a can of tomatos [sic] was sent to my tent as my share.  In looking upon it, I could not but wonder who had been so kind. …  I wish my dear good mother knew you.  She too gave towards the great undertaking; but how she would take you by the hand, and from her heart thank you who, though perchance inadvertently, done this for her son.”

So when you give thanks this week for all that you have, remember to think also of those who have less.  And after the spectacles of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, consider celebrating the second annual Giving Tuesday.  Follow the lead of those Americans who, celebrating the second annual Thanksgiving 149 years ago, created a spectacle of giving and a spectacle of love.

To learn more about Giving Tuesday, click here.

And have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Rachel A. D’Agostino

Curator of Printed Books