A century ago it was generally conceded that a person unfitted for any other occupation either public or private could at least be a teacher, for many teachers of the colonies were felons and convicts brought to America to serve as indentured servants. This egregious error, however, was discovered by the pioneers of the new era in education, who saw clearly enough that the strength of the nation depended upon the professional as well as the academic equipment of its teachers and thus the training school for teachers had its birth. Its influence has been most significant in raising the standards of efficiency in the elementary schools and equally significant is its need in the high schools and colleges of this country.

No one in the District of Columbia can think of the benefits derived from the professional teacher training without immediate recollection and sacred memory of its pioneer and benefactress, Myrtilla Miner. For her noble character, her high ideals, her progressive methods in education, her struggles against opposition in the pursuit of her Godgiven task, her lasting contribution of an organized institution for the training of teachers in the spirit of the Master to serve all humanity, the citizens of the District of Columbia and especially the people of color must ever revere her memory.[1]

On the 4th of March, 1815, in Brookfield, Madison County, New York, Myrtilla Miner, of poor and humble, yet of industrious parentage, was born. As a child, though frail of physique and deprived of opportunity, her indomitable will enabled her to overcome the obstacles of poverty and superstition as well as poor health. Wading through them all she earned enough by arduous labor in the hopfields near her home to purchase books for her further enlightenment. These struggles against fate, however, were the rocks upon which her noble character was built. Here were sown the seed of sympathy for the weak, appreciation for the struggling, and respect for the ambitious.

After a year's training at Clinton, Oneida County, New York, where she obtained the elements of education under the most adverse circumstances of ill health and lack of funds, Miss Miner accepted a call to teach in Mississippi in order to pay the debts incurred for the training she had already received. Her experience in Mississippi was indeed invaluable, for there she learned through horrible experiences the evils of the institution of slavery. She boldly protested against the cruelties of the slaveholders and the institution in general. She innocently requested permission to teach the slaves of the planter whose daughters she was then instructing. When told that such was a criminal offense against the laws of Mississippi and that she should "go North and teach the 'Niggers,'" Miss Miner with an intrepid spirit resolved then and there that she would go North and teach them. Out of this unpleasant experience developed the determination to found a Normal School for girls of color in the city of Washington.

Returning North, Miss Miner found other difficulties than poor health confronting her in her efforts to establish a school for the Negro youth in the District of Columbia. Funds had to be raised, pro-slavery opposition had to be overcome, and public sentiment had to be changed at least to indifference. Each of these in itself was sufficiently colossal to try the strength, physical and moral, of the ablest anti-slavery agitators of that day. It was at the time of the passage of that infamous Fugitive Slave Law, when freedmen and runaways like William Parker, Jerry McHenry and Joshua Glover were knocked down, beaten, bound and cast into prison; when abolitionists were incarcerated for their anti-slavery propaganda and giving aid to the fugitives; when even our valiant Frederick Douglass admitted himself too timid to support any such project as that undertaken by Miss Miner in the city of Washington.[2] It was in times such as these that this fearless and resolute little woman, with an enthusiasm that seemingly glistened in her penetrating eyes, determined to give her life to the cause of alleviating suffering, dispelling ignorance, and liberating the oppressed Americans in body and mind.

With the small sum of one hundred dollars that she had secured from Mrs. Ednah Thomas,[3] of Philadelphia, a member of the Society of Friends, Miss Miner started out upon her great work in behalf of the Negro children of the District of Columbia. Her thrift prompted her to solicit funds of various and peculiar sorts. Donations of old papers, books, weights, measures and other castaway material were transformed by this real teacher into valuable material for the instruction of her undeveloped pupils.

Funds of the material sort were not the only difficulties that beset her road of progress, for pro-slavery opposition assailed Miss Miner from every side.[4] Such propaganda as the following appeared in the National Intelligencer, a Washington newspaper of pro-slavery sentiments and was spread far and wide. (1) The school would attract free colored people from the adjoining States, (2) it was proposed to give them an education far beyond what their political and social condition would justify, (3) the school would be a center of influence directed against the existence of slavery in the District of Columbia, and (4) it might endanger the institution of slavery and even rend asunder the Union itself.[5]

The truth of some parts of this declaration was quite evident and irrefutable, for education, as Miss Miner understood it, was destined to make every slave a man and every man free. This, of course, increased the difficulty of Miss Miner's task but her faith was abiding and her courage unabated. Miss Miner realized fully that the lot of the eight thousand free people of color of the District of Columbia was but little better than that of the 3,000 slaves, for the former, though free according to the letter of the law, in actual life had no rights that a white man was compelled to respect. They were not admitted to public institutions, could not attend the city schools, could not testify against a white man in court, and could not travel without a pass without running the risk of being cast into prison.

Amidst it all, on the 6th day of December 1851, in a rented room about fourteen feet square, in the frame house on Eleventh Street near New York Avenue then owned and occupied as a dwelling by Edward C. Younger,[6] a Negro, Myrtilla Miner with six pupils established as a private institution for the education of girls of color the first Normal School in the District of Columbia and the fourth one in the United States. Increase of enrollment soon forced her to secure accommodations and within two months she had moved into a house on the north side of F Street between Eighteenth and Nineteenth, near the house then occupied by William T. Carroll and Charles H. Winder. This house furnished her a very comfortable room for her growing school of well-behaved girls, from the best Negro families of the District of Columbia. Threats on the part of white neighbors to set fire to the house forced her to leave the home of the Negro family with whom she had stayed but one month and to seek quarters elsewhere. Miss Miner then succeeded in getting accommodations in the dwelling-house of a German family on K Street, near the K Street market. After tarrying a few months there, she moved to L Street into a room in the building known as the "The Two Sisters," then occupied by a white family. But the inconvenience of holding school in rented quarters of private dwellings proved a very unpleasant one indeed; for not only did she suffer the lack of comfort which such quarters naturally could not offer, but found herself constantly harassed by the necessity of moving to escape the enmity and persecution of her white neighbors.

A new day, however, was to dawn. With the aid of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Dr. Gamaliel Bailey and a few such faithful Philadelphia friends as Thomas Williamson, Samuel Rhoads, Benjamin Tatham, Jasper Cope and Catherine Morris, enough funds were raised to purchase a site of three acres or more for a permanent home on a lot near N Street and New Hampshire Avenue, between Nineteenth and Twentieth Streets, Northwest. Though the environment of this new home was most pleasing and beautiful, being surrounded with flowers and fruit trees, the enmity of the white hoodlums still followed her. She and her pupils were frequently assailed with torrents of stones and other missiles. Once threatened by mob violence, Miss Miner bravely and defiantly exclaimed, "Mob my school! You dare not! If you tear it down over my head I shall get another house. There is no law to prevent my teaching these people and I shall teach them even unto death!" Testimony of some of Miss Miner's former pupils upholds such a defiance as truly descriptive of her fearless nature.

In its earlier days the Miner Normal School was supported by private funds and directed by a board of trustees consisting of Benjamin Tatham and H. W. Bellows of New York; Samuel M. Janney of Virginia; Johns Hopkins of Baltimore; Samuel Rhoads and Thomas Williamson of Philadelphia; G. Bailey and L. D. Gale of Washington; C. E. Stowe of Andover; H. W. Beecher of Brooklyn, together with an executive committee consisting of S. J. Bowen, J. M. Wilson and L. D. Gale of Washington; Miss Miner, principal and William H. Beecher, secretary.

The curriculum of the school then embraced boarding, domestic economy, teachers' training course and the primary departments. It is interesting to note that some of the advanced ideas in education today, such as student self-government, vitalized teaching, socialized recitation, and civic as well as personal hygiene, were taught and practiced by Miss Miner during the fifties of the last century.

As an illustration of pupil self-government, I quote the following from the Memoir of M. Miner by Mrs. Ellen M. O'Connor, concerning a visit made by Miss Margaret Robinson of Philadelphia to Miss Miner's school: "In the winter of 1853 accompanied by a friend, I visited the school of Myrtilla Miner, under circumstances of peculiar interest. Arriving about ten A. M., we learned from a pupil at the door that the teacher was absent on business of importance to the school. We were not a little disappointed, supposing all recitations would await her coming. What was our surprise on entering to find every girl in her place, closely occupied with her studies. We seated ourselves by polite invitation; soon a class read; then one in mental arithmetic exercised itself, the more advanced pupils acting as monitors; all was done without confusion. When the teacher entered she expressed no surprise, but took up the business where she found it and went on." On one occasion, being obliged to leave for several days, Miss Miner propounded to the pupils the question, whether the school should be closed, or they should continue their exercises without her? They chose the latter. On her return she found all doing well, not the least disorder having occurred.

As to vitalized teaching, Matilda Jones Madden, one of Miss Miner's pupils, wrote the following: "She gave special attention to the proper writing of letters and induced a varied correspondence between many prominent persons and her pupils, thus in a practical way bringing her school into larger notice with many of its patrons and friends and vastly increasing the experience of her pupils."

Mrs. John F. N. Wilkinson, a former pupil of Miss Miner, of Washington, D. C., states that Miss Miner held classes in astronomy with the larger girls who were required to meet at the school in the evenings to study their lessons from nature. Mrs. Amelia E. Wormley, the mother of the writer, residing in Washington, also a pupil of Miss Miner, recalls vividly the emphasis which Miss Miner placed upon the teaching of physical culture and the tenderness with which she handled the younger children of her school.[7]

The school increased in usefulness and importance. As a result of this, on March 3, 1863, the Senate and House of Representatives passed an act to incorporate this institution for the education of girls of color in the District of Columbia. By the act William H. Channing, George J. Abbot, Miss Miner, and others, their associate and successors were constituted and declared a body politic and corporate by the name and title of "The Institution for the Education of Colored Youth," to be located in the District of Columbia. Though this act of Congress legalized the institution, the school appears to have lapsed into inactivity from 1863 to 1871 because of the absence of its guiding spirit, Miss Miner. On account of ill health she was compelled to give up the work, and the strain and stress of civil affairs reduced national interest and support to a minimum. After a sojourn of three years in California in search of renewed energy and more funds for the fulfillment of her plans and the consummation of her ideals, Miss Miner departed from this life at the home of Mrs. Nancy M. Johnson of Washington, D. C., on the 17th of December 1864.

In 1871 the work of the school was resumed in connection with Howard University. A preparatory and Normal Department was opened and controlled by this institution but supported by the Miner Funds. The school existed in this connection until September 13, 1876, when it began a separate and independent existence which lasted until 1879 when it was taken over by the school system of the District of Columbia. From 1879 to 1887 the Miner Normal School was jointly controlled by the Board[8] of Trustees of the Public Schools of the District and the Miner Board of Trustees, the principal's salary being paid by the Miner Board to which she made her reports while the obligation of keeping up the enrollment of the school was assumed by the Trustees representing the District Government.

In 1887 the Trustees of the District assumed full charge of the school thus centralizing authority and management. The unification of the dual management under District authority added keener interest on the part of the citizenship of the community and a deeper feeling of responsibility on the part of the faculty. Fortunately for the institution, moreover, the women who succeeded Miss Miner as the heads of this institution caught the great spirit of their predecessor and in their efforts to continue the useful work which she had done, followed so closely in the path which she had trodden as to assure success and preclude any necessity for general reorganization.

The first of these women to take up the work of Miss Miner, was Miss Mary B. Smith, of Beverly, Massachusetts, who was assisted by her sister Miss Sarah R. Smith. These two worthy ladies were succeeded by Miss Martha Briggs who is characterized by Dr. W. S. Montgomery in his Historical Sketch on Education for the Colored Race in the District of Columbia, 1807-1905, "as a born teacher whose work showed those qualities of head and heart that have made her name famous in the annals of education in the character of the graduates. The student teachers caught her missionary spirit and went forth from her presence stronger souls, full of sympathy to magnify the teacher's vocation and to inspire the learner. Many of the women who sat at her feet are laboring in the schools here now, filling the highest positions and in beauty and richness of character running like a thread of gold through the teaching corps."

Miss Briggs was succeeded in 1883 by Dr. Lucy E. Moten, who after faithful and successful service for thirty-seven years, retired June 20, 1920. As principal of the Miner Normal School, Dr. Moten graduated the majority of the teachers now employed in the public schools of the District. She saw the Normal course lengthened from a one year course to that of a two year course, offering greater opportunity for broader professional equipment of the student teachers, the results of which are manifest in the Washington Public Schools today. This school, however, is destined in the near future to undergo other changes in the line of progress. It may be the extension of the course to three years or the development of a Teacher's college of four years which will offer courses leading to a degree. With an enthusiastic whole-hearted response of the teaching corps of Washington, D. C., to the slogan of the new Superintendent, Dr. Frank Washington Ballou—"Hats off to the past and coats off to the future," The Miner Normal School will reach higher in its aim to serve and realize the ideals of its noble founder and benefactress, whose struggles and sacrifices are sacred in the memory of every teacher of color in the District of Columbia.

G. Smith Wormley.

[1] The facts set forth in this sketch were obtained largely from Ellen M. O'Connor's Myrtilla Miner, A Memoir; W. S. Montgomery's Historical Sketch of the Education for the Colored Race in the District of Columbia, 1807-1905; and The Special Report of the Commissioner of Education on the condition and improvement of the Public Schools in the District of Columbia, submitted to the Senate June 1868 and the House, with additions, June 17, 1870-1871. Some valuable facts were also obtained from former pupils of Miss Myrtilla Miner now residing in the District of Columbia and from public spirited citizens who cooperated with her.