This migration, however, made matters worse for the Negroes who were left in the South.

As only the most enlightened blacks left the slave States, the bondmen and the indigent free persons of color were thereby deprived of helpful contact.

The preponderance of intelligent Negroes, therefore, was by 1840 on the side of the North.

Thereafter the actual education of the colored people was largely confined to eastern cities and northern communities of transplanted freedmen.

The pioneers of these groups organized churches and established and maintained a number of successful elementary schools.
In addition to providing for rudimentary instruction, the free Negroes of the North helped their friends to make possible what we now call higher education.