Mrs. Sarah J. S. Garnet

Sarah Garnet was the oldest child of a large and prosperous Long Island family. A student in the New York public school system, at age fourteen she was appointed monitor under the supervision of John Peterson. Like Maritcha, she spent her entire career in education; she was the first black woman appointed principal of a Manhattan grammar school. She was briefly married to Henry Highland Garnet, but separated from him after a year of marriage.

Devoting herself to feminist causes, Sarah founded the Equal Suffrage Club in the late 1880s which she kept going until her death in 1911. At the end of her teaching career, she joined other women of her grade in the school system to fight for “equal pay for equal work.”

NYPL ID number: 1819714
Harry A. Williamson papers: additions, 1881-1962

Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

Maritcha Lyons

This is a photograph of Maritcha as an adult.

In adulthood, Maritcha was able to fulfill her lifelong ambition of becoming a school teacher. In her memoir, she credited the many people who helped her at every step of the way. In childhood, there were her parents, who “made over a sickly, peevish, unproposing [sic] girl into a woman with a new lease on life” and sacrificed so that she could “attain what was regarded in my youth as a liberal education for a woman.” Later came her teachers, most esepcially Charles Reason.

Maritcha devoted herself to elementary education. She began at Colored School no. 1, later P.S. 67, where Charles Dorsey, another member of Brooklyn’s black elite, was principal and the much admired Georgiana Putnam assistant principal. There, Maritcha progressed from teaching the lowest primary grade to instructing the graduating class. Ten years later, she was hired as the assistant principal of P.S. 83 under the directorship of Frank Harding whose further mentoring helped her become, in her own words, “useful and efficient.”

Thanks to her long career Maritcha developed a well-defined set of teaching principles. Recognizing that elementary education was the full extent of what the majority of children—black or white, native born or immigrant—would receive, Maritcha saw herself as providing “the education of the masses rather than of the classes.” She believed that there were three essential components to their education: information, which included not only book knowledge but also critical thinking; elevation, or moral development and the formation of personality; and the cultivation of the mind-body connection since she was convinced that control over muscles led to greater mental readiness and concentration.

In 1892, Maritcha moved beyond the female sphere of elementary school teaching into political activism. That year she debated Ida B. Wells at the Brooklyn Literary Union and, in the eyes of many, won the debate. The two women became close friends. Maritcha mentored Wells “extempore speaking"; in turn, it was Wells who convinced Maritcha and her friends to start a black women's club in Brooklyn, the Woman's Loyal Union.

NYPL: psnypl_scg_219
Harry A. Williamson Photograph Collection

circa 1900s

Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

Philip White note, Laurens Street School

Philip's father Thomas died in 1835 when Philip was about twelve years old. A year later Philip became a student at Colored School no. 2 on Laurens Street. Located in a brand new two-story building, this school, in contrast to the earlier Mulberry Street School, was run by black teachers. The boys’ principal teacher was Charles Reason.

Thomas's death left the family quite poor. The Public School Society helped out by hiring Philip and his mother for occasional, low skilled jobs. The Society's books recorded the following payments: on January 25 and April 28 1840, $3 to Philip A. White for making fires in African Public School no.2 during three months; on June 11, 1841, $15 to Elizabeth White for cleaning and whitewashing primary school no. 7.

William Bryan Public School Society Record Book, Vol 62

1840

The New-York Historical Society

Charles Reason

The younger brother of Patrick Reason, Charles also attended the Mulberry Street School in the late 1820s where he excelled as a student. After graduation, he dedicated himself to a life of public activism, fighting for the abolitionist cause ase well as the restitution of black male suffrage taken away by an 1822 amendment to the State constitution. A member of several literary societies that flourished in the black communit in the 1830s and 1840s, Charles gave lectures of Milton and Wordsworth and dabbled in poetry writing.

Above all, Charles was devoted to the cause of black education. As principal teacher at the Laurens Street school, he taught Philip White in the late 1830s. Years later, he became Maritcha Lyons's teacher.

Denison's

NYPL ID number: 104235
Portrait Collection

Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

Patrick Reason

Patrick Reason was a classmate of Peter Guignon's at the Mulberry Street School. After his graduation, British born engraver, Stephen Henry Gimber, took Patrick into his shop for a four year apprenticeship “to learn the art, trade and mystery of an engraver,” paying his mother three dollars a week for his labor. It was during this period that Patrick did the no famous portrait of Peter Williams Jr. for St. Philip’s. He also designed a stipple engraving of a kneeling female slave with chains hanging from her wrists accompanied by the inscription “Am I Not a Woman and a Sister?,” the counterpart of the famous Wedgwood seal of a kneeling male slave produced in Britain in the late 1780s.

By 1838, Patrick was doing well enough to advertise himself in the Colored American as a “Portrait and Landscape Engraver, Draughtsman and Lithographer.” In 1840, he gave Philip White an apprenticeship in his shop until it became apparent that Philip had no talent in this line of work. By the 1850s, Patrick had a shop on Bond Street, close to the homes of fashionable New Yorkers. He moved to Cleveland in 1869 and remained there for the rest of his life.

Pifer & Becker

NYPL ID number: 01SCCAB
Cabinet card collection

circa 1890s

Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

Alexander Crummell, abolitionist, Episcopal minister and missionary

Alexander Crummell was a student at the Mulberry Street School at the same time as Peter Guignon; the two remained lifelong friends. After graduation, Crummell attended Noyes Academy in New Hampshire and Oneida Institute in upstate New York with Henry Highland Garnet for a short period of time. Setting his sights on becoming an Episcopal minister, Crummell encountered stiff resistance from the church hierarchy, but was finally ordained in 1844. Soon thereafter, he left for England where he matriculated at Queen’s College, Cambridge University, and received a Doctorate of Divinity in 1853. Crummell then moved to Liberia where he labored as a missionary for the next twenty years.

Crummell returned to the United States in the early 1870s. Although much legislation had been passed during Reconstruction granting civil rights to black Americans, much work remained to be done. As a theologian and intellectual, Crummell spoke and wrote extensively on racial issues. Towards the end of his life, he founded the American Negro Academy. He became the mentor of one of its younger members, W.E. B. Du Bois, and exercised enormous influence over the up-and-coming scholar.

NYPL: psnypl_scg_504
Portrait Collection

circa 1890s

Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

Henry Highland Garnet, abolitionist and editor

Born into slavery in Maryland, Henry Highland Garnet escaped north with his family, arriving in New York City in 1825. He was a student at the Mulberry Street School at the same time as Peter Guignon, and later attended Noyes Academy in New Hampshire and Oneida Institute in upstate New York with Alexander Crummell. Ordained a Presbyterian minister, Garnet settled in Troy, New York where he led his own congregation. In addition, Garnet was a radical political activist. He was one of the first to suggest violent resistance to slavery and promote the emigration of black Americans to Africa. As such, he frequently found hismelf at odds with the more integration minded George Downing.

In 1881, President Garfield appointed Garnet United States Minister and Counsel General to Liberia. Garnet left for Liberia in November 1881, only to die there in February 1882.

NYPL: psnypl_scg531
Portrait Collection

Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

George Thomas Downing, businessman and civil rights leader

George Downing was Thomas Downing's son and attend the Mulberry Street School at the same time as Peter Guignon. Following in his father's footsteps, he opened a catering business on Broadway, then moved to Newport, Rhode Island where he built a very fancy resort hotel, the Sea Girt House.

Like his father, George was a lifelong political activist. He firmly believed that integration was the only solution to America's race problems and successfully pushed for the integration of Rhode Island schools. After the Civil War, he moved for a time to Washington D.C. where he worked closely with Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner to ensure the passage of civil rights legislation. By the 1880s, however, he had become deeply disillusioned with party politics and for a time switched his allegiance from the Republican to the Democratic party.

NYPL ID number: 1804236
Portrait Collection

circa 1880s

Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations