In the 1820s, few Americans could imagine a viable future for black children. Even abolitionists saw just two options for African American youth: permanent subjection or exile.
Dr. Anna Mae Duane’s book Educated for Freedom: The Incredible Story of Two Fugitive Schoolboys Who Grew Up to Change a Nation (NYU Press, 2020) tells the story of James McCune Smith (1813-1865) and Henry Highland Garnet (1815-1882), two black children who came of age and into freedom as their country struggled to grow from a slave nation into a free country.
Smith and Garnet met as schoolboys at the Mulberry Street New York African Free School in the city of New York, an educational experiment created by people who believed in freedom’s power to transform the country.
James McCune Smith became an American physician, apothecary, abolitionist and author. He was the first African American to earn a medical degree.
Henry Highland Garnet became a prominent abolitionist, minister, educator, orator, and diplomat. Having escaped as a child from slavery in Maryland with his family, he moved to Troy, NY, in 1839, where he taught school and studied theology. In 1842, Garnet became pastor of Troy’s Liberty Street Presbyterian church, a position he held for six years.
With his friend William G. Allen he published the National Watchman, an abolitionist newspaper. Closely identifying with the church, Garnet also supported the temperance movement.
Garnet sheltered fugitive slaves in his Liberty Street church, and philanthropist Gerrit Smith announced in his church his plan for giving grants of land to disenfranchised Black men in what became known as Timbuctoo, in the Adirondacks in Essex County, NY.
Dr. Anna Mae Duane is a Professor of English and Director of the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute. She teaches and writes in the fields of American Studies, African American Literature, and the Medical Humanities.
Upcoming Event
On February 11, 2025, the NYC Department of Records and Information Services (DORIS) will host a free virtual event beginning at 1 pm ET. Dr. Duane will discuss her book about Smith and Garnet.
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