30.] In Boston, where were found more Negroes than in most New England communities, the colored people themselves maintained a separate school after the revolutionary era.

In the towns of Salem, Nantucket, New Bedford, and Lowell the colored schools failed to make much progress after the first quarter of the nineteenth century on account of the more liberal construction of the laws which provided for democratic education.

This the free blacks were forced to advocate for the reason that the seeming onerous task of supporting a dual system often caused the neglect, and sometimes the extinction of the separate schools.

Furthermore, either the Negroes of some of these towns were too scarce or the movement to furnish them special facilities of education started too late to escape the attacks of the abolitionists.
Seeing their mistake of first establishing separate schools, they began to attack caste in public education.
In the eastern cities where colored school systems thereafter continued, the work was not always successful.

The influx of fugitives in the rough sometimes jeopardized their chances for education by menacing liberal communities with the trouble of caring for an undesirable class.