CAUTION: The following column, written in 1883, profiles a young white teacher, Caroline Macy, who defended the enrollment of African-American girls in a Children’s Aid Society school for disadvantaged children. The writer asserts that Macy, while defending education for all, nevertheless held supremacist beliefs. This may or may not have been her thinking. While Macy’s courage is admirable, it should be noted that the Harry Hill columns that ran weekly from 1880-1886 never profiled any African-American teachers in New York City, though many preceded and came after Macy.
As they are makin’ a big time in the papers now about the comin’ semi-centennial of the startin’ of the Anti-Slavery Society, it may be interestin’ to my readers to recall the followin’ incident of the old war times and their prejudices in this city.
Some time ago I wrote about a man called Macy, who understood “boy” nature so well that I called him “an artist in boys.” Certain qualities or attributes seem to run in families, and this Macy had a sister who was in her line quite as great an artist in girls.
She took charge of a girl’s school in College Place, furnished by her brother for her, and carried it on in so admirable a manner that a number of wealthy ladies got interested in the enterprise, seein’ how devoted she was to it, and how she liked her work, and how quietly and conscientiously she went about it, makin’ no fuss, but doin’ good.
She was a tall, prim woman, wasn’t all handsome, but had a sweet smile. It was her sweet smile and her pleasant manner that attached the children to her, and she got very much attached to children–was a kind of a mother to all of ‘em. Well, her school flourished and she started a little “free readin’ room” for her scholars, and got up some picnics, and altogether made herself a sort of Lady Bountiful in that part of the city, where heaven knows they needed somebody to be bountiful.
Most of the scholars were Irish, but some were German, and quite a number of ‘em colored. The Irish children didn’t like the colored children, of course, and made it kind of unpleasant for ‘em. But they didn’t go too far, for fear of offending Miss Macy.
This was in the early days of the great civil war, which ran along in its big bloody way until at last the draft was commenced, when the three days’ riot took place, in which a lot of negroes got killed and all the colored population in New York got frightened.
Durin’ the riot excitement the parents of the negro children kept ‘em at home; but when order was restored the children went to school again. But by this time the mere dislike which had been entertained by the whites against the blacks had been increased to downright hatred, and the first day after the young negroes got back, the whites made things more than usually disagreeable to the colored children, whose numbers had now been increased, the colored people havin’ learned to look up to and respect Miss Macy as bein’ one who had some feelin’s for the colored people.
Under the circumstances it was all that Miss Macy could do to keep the Irish girls from comin’ to blows with the colored girls. But she managed to get through the day without any open disturbance, and congratulated herself at the idea that in all probability the storm had blown off, and and that in a few days the prejudice against Negroes would wear off.
But it didn’t wear off; it got increasin’ The white girls went home and told their mothers and fathers that more colored children were being admitted to the school on the same terms as they were, and this piece of news made the mothers and fathers hoppin’ mad.
They swore that the negroes shouldn’t be treated in the same way as their children were, and the next mornin’ went to the school in College Place to give Miss Macy a piece of their mind.
Some six or seven mothers, and eight of the fathers, brothers, and so on, came to Miss Macy’s school next day determined to prevent the admission of “the colored delegates.” But they found when they got there a class of the colored children gettin’ instructed personally by Miss Macy herself. This made the white visitors mad, and they raised a lot of fuss, and stirred up a lot of noise. But Miss Macy went right on teachin’ her class as if nothin’ was the matter.
Then, when she got through with the colored class, she went up to the white children who had just come with their fathers and mothers, and talked to ‘em kindly, kissing ‘em and leadin’ them to their seats, the same as if nothin’ had happened or was goin’ to happen.
The children, used to obeyin’ Miss Macy, and sat down and in a minute more order would have been restored, had not an old woman who hadn’t any children of her own at the school begun to abuse Miss Macy and say it was a shame that “the children of decent white people should be made to ‘sociate with the bloody nagers.”
This sentiment of hers bein’ readily backed up by the men, distracted the children’s attention, and forced Miss Macy to do what she detested doin’, make a speech.
It was a short and sensible one. She didn’t talk about white children bein’ no better than black, or about the blacks bein’ equal to the whites. In the first place, she didn’t think this true, and in the next place, she knew it would irritate those she wanted to conciliate. No, she took just the opposite ground and asked the “white folk” present, just because they were white and belonged to the winnin’ color, to have pity on the poor little children, who were so despised on account of their color, and who had only the chance at her school here of gettin’ educated at all. She took the hand and patted the head of one of the little picaninnies and appealed to the mothers present if it wasn’t a really nice and pretty child, and if it could help it’s having been born black, and asked ‘em to give it a chance.
This kind of talk touched some of the women, but it made the old hag I have just mentioned wild with rage, and, without talkin’ any she took hold of the little pickaninny and pulled her away and told her to run off or she would break every bone in its blasted body. The pickaninny burst out cryin’, and the other colored children, frightened, tried to run out of the school, but Miss Macy stopped ‘em, made ‘em go back to their seats, and seizin’ the little pickaninny in her arms, said that she was schoolmistress here, and as long as she kept the school nobody, white or black, should ever keep anybody else out of it who wanted to stay in it.
Then a big, burly man, the husband of the old hag, swore that his “old woman” was right and that no negro’s brat would ever go to school with any white child if he could help it, and, advancing to Miss Macy, tried to pull the pickaninny out of her arms.
Miss Macy wasn’t a strong woman–on the contrary, frail and delicate. She wasn’t a fightin’ woman, either. She was a Quakeress, too; but just then she would have faced all the men and women in creation in defense of her principles and her pickaninny.
She drew herself up to her full height and look the big, burly man full in the face, straight in the eye, never flinched or quailed. It was a serious moment–a dangerous situation. Had she shown the slightest sign, either of fear or bounce, the big, burly man and the big, burly men and women round him would have conquered her, injured her, perhaps killed her in a moment. But she was true grit. She neither swaggered nor trembled, but stood there holdin’ the pickaninny and looking just like what she was, a woman who would have died for what she thought right.
And so the big, burly man did nothin’, and the big, burly men and women around did nothin’, only took their children away with ‘em and left the school almost empty.
And when they were gone the gentle Miss Macy, who was as brave as a regiment of men just a minute before, became a woman again and burst into a good fit of cryin’. She could afford to cry now after she had conquered.
And she had conquered, too, far more than she imagined; for within a few days the white mothers and fathers felt ashamed of ‘emselves and took their children back to school again, and in their warm-hearted way were afterwards better friends of Miss Macy’s than ever.
There was never any more “color line” drawn in that school.
[Editor’s notes: As the column above state, Caroline Macy was the sister of Jared Macy, the “shepherd of boys.”]
