Prominent among the first of these workers was Daniel Coker, known to fame as a colored Methodist missionary, who was sent to Liberia.

Prior to 1812 he had in Baltimore an academy which certain students from Washington attended when they had no good schools of their own, and when white persons began to object to the co-education of the races.

Because of these conditions two daughters of George Bell, the builder of the first colored schoolhouse in the District of Columbia, went to Baltimore to study under Coker.[1] An adult Negro school in this city had 180 pupils in 1820.

There were then in the Baltimore Sunday-schools about 600 Negroes.

They had formed themselves into a Bible association which had been received into the connection of the Baltimore Bible Society.[2] In 1825 the Negroes there had a day and a night school, giving courses in Latin and French.