Early Schooling

Early Schooling of Black Youth in Washington

In 1818, the Resolute Beneficial Society, a mutual aid society formed by free Blacks in the District of Columbia to provide health and burial benefits for members, opened the first school for Black children in Washington.  The school was free.  In 1822, after the Society was forced by economic circumstances to close the school, Henry Smothers, a Black man, provided a classroom and taught his neighbors' children free of charge.  He then built a schoolhouse at 14th and H Street, NW, near the current site of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, where as many as 100 Black children attended.  When the costs of the school became too great for Mr. Smothers to bear, John Prout, another Black man, took over, charging each pupil a 12 1/2 cent monthly tuition.

Since 1962, the Community Club, a tutoring program for inner city youth that meets at the New York Avenue Church, has carried on the heritage of educational opportunity begun by Misters Smothers and Prout at that place 150 years before.

Information from Constance McLaughlin Green.
Washington: A History of the Capital, 1800-1950.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962.