The larger institutions were mainly supported by State and charitable organizations of which the Society of Friends and the Pennsylvania Abolition Society were the most important.

Besides supporting these institutions, however, the intelligent colored men of Philadelphia had maintained smaller schools and organized a system of lyceums and debating clubs, one of which had a library of 1400 volumes.

Moreover, there were then teaching in the colored families and industrial schools of Philadelphia many men and women of both races.[1] Although these instructors restricted their work to the teaching of the rudiments of education, they did much to help the more advanced schools to enlighten the Negroes who came to that city in large numbers when conditions became intolerable for the free people of color in the slave States.

The statistics of the following decade show unusual progress.

In the year 1859 there were in the colored public schools of Philadelphia, 1031 pupils; in the charity schools, 748; in the benevolent schools, 211; in private schools, 331; in all, 2321, whereas in 1849 there were only 1643.[2] [Footnote 1: About the middle of the nineteenth century colored schools of various kinds arose in Philadelphia.