In 1810 certain Quaker women who had attempted to establish a school for colored girls in 1795 apparently succeeded.[2] The institution, however, did not last many years.

But the Clarkson Hall schools maintained by the Abolition Society were then making such progress that the management was satisfied that they furnished a decided refutation of the charge that the "mental endowments of the descendants of the African race are inferior to those possessed by their white brethren."[3] They asserted without fear of contradiction that the pupils of that seminary would sustain a fair comparison with those of any other institution in which the same elementary branches were taught.

In 1815 these schools were offering free instruction to three hundred boys and girls, and to a number of adults attending evening schools.

These victories had been achieved despite the fact that in regard to some of the objects of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade "a tide of prejudice, popular and legislative, set strongly against them."[4] After 1818, however, help was obtained from the State to educate the colored children of Columbia and Philadelphia.
[Footnote 1: _Proceedings of the American Conv_., 1809, p.

16, and 1812, p.