School for Formerly Enslaved Children

An 1864 photograph taken in Alexandria shows Black students of varying ages posing in front of a new schoolhouse. Harriet Jacobs (seen in photo at right, with an x beneath her image), a formerly enslaved freedperson, and her daughter, Louisa Matilda Jacobs, were sent by the Society of Friends in New York, a Quaker relief charity, to serve the needs of the Black refugee population that had fled enslavement and settled in the federally-controlled city of Alexandria. Mother and daughter helped raise money needed to compete construction of the school, which opened on January 11, 1864 with 75 students, and, within three months, had 225 students. A letter published by Harriet and Louisa Jacobs in the National Anti-Slavery Standard on April 16, 1864, added further details about the school and its governance:

A question arose whether the white teachers or the colored teachers should be superintendents. The freedmen had built the school-house for their children, and were Trustees of the school. So, after some discussion, it was decided that it would be best for them to hold a meeting, and settle the question for themselves. I wish you could have been at that meeting. Most of the people were slaves, until quite recently, but they talked sensibly, and I assure you that they put the question to vote in quite parliamentary style. The result was a decision that the colored teachers should have charge of the school. We were gratified by this result, because our sympathies are closely linked with our oppressed race. These people, born and bred in slavery, had always been so accustomed to look upon the white race as their natural superiors and masters, that we had some doubts whether they could easily throw off the habit; and the fact of their giving preference to colored teachers, as managers of the establishment, seemed to us to indicate that even their brief possession of freedom had begun to inspire them with respect for their race.