In 1807 George Bell, Nicholas Franklin, and Moses Liverpool, former slaves, built the first colored schoolhouse in the District of Columbia.

Just emerging from bondage, these men could not teach themselves, but employed a white man to take charge of the school.[1] It was not a success.

Pupils of color thereafter attended the school of Anne Maria Hall, a teacher from Prince George County, Maryland, and those of teachers who instructed white children.[2] The ambitious Negroes of the District of Columbia, however, were not discouraged by the first failure to provide their own educational facilities.

The Bell School which had been closed and used as a dwelling, opened again in 1818 under the auspices of an association of free people of color of the city of Washington called the "Resolute Beneficial Society." The school was declared open then "for the reception of free people of color and others that ladies and gentlemen may think proper to send to be instructed in reading, writing, arithmetic, English grammar, or other branches of education apposite to their capacities, by steady, active and experienced teachers, whose attention is wholly devoted to the purpose described." The founders presumed that free colored families would embrace the advantages thus presented to them either by subscription to the funds of the Society or by sending their children to the school.

Since the improvement of the intellect and the morals of the colored youth were the objects of the institution, the patronage of benevolent ladies and gentlemen was solicited.