then offered courses in the handicrafts. In 1784 the Quakers of
Philadelphia employed Sarah Dwight to teach the colored girls
sewing.[2] Anthony Benezet provided in his will that in the school
to be established by his benefaction the girls should be taught
needlework.[3] The teachers who took upon themselves the improvement
of the free people of color of New York City regarded industrial
training as one of their important tasks.[4]

[Footnote 1: See the _Address of the Am. Conv. of Abolition
Societies_, 1794; _ibid._, 1795; _ibid._, 1797 _et passim._]

[Footnote 2: Wickersham, _History of Ed. in Pa._, p. 249.]

[Footnote 3: _Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed._, 1869, p. 375.]

[Footnote 4: Andrews, _History of the New York African Free Schools_,
p. 20.]

None urged this duty upon the directors of these schools more
persistently than the antislavery organizations. In 1794 the American
Convention of Abolition Societies recommended that Negroes be
instructed in "those mechanic arts which will keep them most
constantly employed and, of course, which will less subject them to
idleness and debauchery, and thus prepare them for becoming good
citizens of the United States."[1] Speaking repeatedly on this wise
the Convention requested the colored people to let it be their special
care to have their children not only to work at useful trades but also
to till the soil.[2] The early abolitionists believed that this was
the only way the freedmen could learn to support themselves.[3]
In connection with their schools the antislavery leaders had an