Albany Private Academies
While Ohio state law presented difficulties, Athens offered opportunities for Black parents who hoped to educate their children. The most well-known of these was the Albany Manual Labor University. The school was unsegregated and initially funded by the sale of company shares. The school implemented a manual labor element, which allowed students to work to pay for their education. An 1849 document by the school’s trustees read, “The colored man, with a few honorable exceptions, has been denied the means of mental elevation, but we cheerfully accord to him all the rights of a common humanity, and intend assiduously to labor for his elevation.”[1]
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The school was divided into three departments: primary, preparatory and collegiate. The primary department provided elementary school level education. In 1859, there were 30 students taking elementary classes. All were Ohio natives: 24 from Lee Township in Athens County, three from Cincinnati, two from Jackson, and one from Wilkesville.[2] While most of the white primary students were children, the Black students were all ages.[3] Black students from across the state had a chance to seek education they were unable to seek in their childhoods. The preparatory students took courses in orthography, reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, grammar, book-keeping and history. Students could begin Latin and Greek to transition into collegiate level education.[4]
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The collegiate department was a four-year program that gave students an education similar to other universities at the time. Like Ohio University’s program, the Manual Labor University’s curriculum focused on classical literature, logic and rhetoric, philosophy, and math and science courses.[5] A college education was a pathway to professional careers like law, politics and ministry, and the university made that education accessible to Black students.
While many of the collegiate students were from Athens and surrounding counties, the 1856 class included students from Indiana, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Texas.[6] During the years when the university admitted Black students, the Black population of Albany grew. Only four Black residents lived in Albany in 1850, but that number increased to 174.[7] Black Americans wanted an education and the opportunities that came with it, and they were willing to move to Albany to get it.
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The Albany Labor University was part of a larger trend in Black education in the United States. The First Annual Convention for the Free People of Color in Pennsylvania, held in 1831, supported this model, which offered students both a classical education and a vocational education, allowing Black students to compete with white workers as skilled laborers.[8]
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Albany Manual Labor University curriculum, 1858. Perdreau Collection.
Ohio was one of several states to open schools with this model. The Albany school was part of a widespread effort by free Black activists to provide chances for upward mobility. The training offered by the school made students equally qualified to do jobs dominated by white men, and since the labor system paid tuition, anyone could finance their education through schools like this. Additionally, an education, especially one involving Greek and Latin literature, was a way for Black Americans to push back on the idea that they were intellectually and culturally inferior.[9]
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The model was a success; the school obtained a charter in 1853, and by 1857 enrollment had reached 284 students.[10] Some of these students came from other states. The school was featured in Frederick Douglass’ Paper in 1853 as an inclusive school free from “sectarian influences”, indicating it was well-regarded by the Black abolitionist movement.[11] Given Albany’s stance as an abolitionist community,[12] and given the poor condition of many schools in the period, it is likely that many free Blacks moved to Albany to obtain an education for themselves or their children.
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The Historical Marker for the Albany Enterprise Academy.
The Albany Manual Labor Academy underwent significant changes. In the early 1860s, the school changed ownership and became a segregated school. This was a blow to the Black community in Albany. Despite this setback, the Black residents were not ready to give up on their hope of equal education. They began selling shares and soliciting donations from wealthy donors. By 1863, the Albany Enterprise Academy admitted Black pupils.[13] Their hard work and generous donations had given them a school the white community could not take from them.
An editor of the Athens Messenger encouraged the school’s formation as a space set apart for Black students, writing “We have no doubt that time will vindicate the policy of mutual exclusion, and we would say to the officers and patrons of this institution, as they value its welfare, never to admit a white man into the Enterprise Academy as shareholder, teacher or scholar. You have tried a mixed school and failed. The people will assist you to regain your footing, and then your ability to sustain yourselves is on trial.”[14]
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The tone of the editorial speaks to the Athens white community’s attitude towards race in education. To some extent, they understood the importance of education for Black residents, particularly as the Civil War brought freedom seekers into Ohio to seek a better life. While this was true, the writer saw the Manual Labor Academy as a failed experiment in racially inclusive education. A segregated approach, he maintained, was necessary.
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Still, this community’s ability to secure funding for their own school in response to their exclusion speaks to the resourcefulness of Albany’s Black residents in making a space for themselves within a segregated community. Graduates of the Manual Labor University and the Enterprise Academy went on to successful careers. Milton Holland, whose slaveholder father had freed him and sent him to the university, was awarded a Medal of Honor during the Civil War and worked for the United States government. His brother, William Holland, was also a Civil War veteran. William was an educator in Texas after the war, and he served on the Texas Legislature’s education committee.[15] After graduating from the Enterprise Academy, Olivia Davidson taught at the Tuskegee Institute. She met Booker T. Washington while working there, and the two were married in her sister’s house in Athens.[16] Although Edward Berry left school to support his widowed mother, he opened the Berry Hotel on Court Street in 1893.[17] The hotel was a success with both Black and white patrons. Education at the Albany private schools allowed these and other Black Americans to realize the vision voiced by the Enterprise Academy: “The day has gone by for the colored man to be used as a mere machine.”[18]
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Olivia Davidson. Framingham State University Archives.
Notes
1. Albany Manual Labor Academy Trustees, April 21, 1859. Perdreau Collection, Chesterhill Multicultural Genealogical Center.
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2. Annual Catalogue of the Officers and Students of the Albany Manual Labor University at Albany, Athens County, O. 1857-8 and 1858-9 (Athens: N. H. Van Vorhes, 1859), 2. Southeast Ohio History Center.
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3. Ivan M. Tribe, “Rise and Decline of Private Academies in Albany, Ohio,” Ohio History 78, no. 3 (1969), 191. Ohio History Connection. https://resources.ohiohistory.org/ohj/browse/displaypages.php?display[]=0078&display[]=188&display[]=201.
4. Annual Catalogue, 12.
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5. Annual Catalogue, 12; Ohio University bulletin. Undergraduate catalog, 1858-1859 (Athens: N. H. Van Vorhes, 1859), 13-15. Mahn Center for Archives and Special Collections. Ohio University. https://archive.org/details/ohiouniversitybu1859ohio/page/12/mode/2up.
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6. Albany Manual Labor University catalogue, 1855-6, 6-7. Perdreau Collection, Multicultural Genealogical Center.
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7. Ivan M. Tribe, “Rise and Decline of Private Academies in Albany, Ohio,” 196.
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8. Hilary J. Moss, Schooling Citizens: The Struggle for African American Education in Antebellum America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 48-49.
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9. Margaret Malamud, African Americans and the Classics: Antiquity, Abolition and Activism (London: I.B. Tauris, 2016), 12-28.
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10. Ivan M. Tribe, “Rise and Decline of Private Academies," 188-191.
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11. Frederick Douglass, “Albany Manual Labor Academy – New Arrangement”, Frederick Douglass’ Paper (Rochester, NY), April 29, 1853.
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12. Martha R. Wright, “A Very Special School”, Columbus Dispatch Magazine (Columbus, OH), March 14, 1976.
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13. Wright, “A Very Special School.”
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14. “Enterprise Academy”, Athens Messenger, April 9, 1863, 3.
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15. Scott Britton, “But Not For My Children: The Holland Brothers’ Unlikely Journey From Slavery” (Presentation, Civil War Round Table, Virtual, January 21, 2021).
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16. Ada Woodson Adams and Nancy E. Aiken, A Significant Presence: A Pictorial Glimpse of the Black Experience in Athens County, Ohio (Chesterhill, OH: Multicultural Genealogical Center, 2004), 14.
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17. Booker T. Washington, The Negro in Business (Boston: Hertel, Jenkins, 1907) 62-65.
18. Issa Lara Combs, “Albany School Pioneered In African American Education,” Athens News, December 5, 1994. Perdreau Collection, Multicultural Genealogical Center.
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Image 1: "Albany Manual Labor Academy Source of Study." Perdreau Collection, Multicultural Genealogical Center, Chesterhill OH.
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Image 3: "Portrait of Olivia Davidson," 1881. Henry Whittemore Library Collection, Framingham University. Massachusetts Digital Commonwealth. https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/5425kn64r
