Abstract
“To-day school commenced,” wrote the Philadelphia-born Charlotte Forten, who began keeping a journal May 24, 1854, shortly before her seventeenth birthday. Wednesday, September 12, 1855, signaled the beginning of classes and chances to reestablish the alleged camaraderie among schoolgirls. Rather than rejoicing over the renewal of acquaintances among classmates at the predominantly white Higginson Grammar School in Salem, Massachusetts, Forten was “most happy … to return to the companionship of [her] studies.” Challenging academic assignments were her “ever … most valued friends.”1
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Notes
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Roger Bruns, ed., Am I Not a Man and a Brother: The Antislavery Crusade of Revolutionary America, 1688–1788 (New York: Chelsea House Publishing, 1977), 306.
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© 2005 Wilma King
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King, W. (2005). No Bondage for Me: Free Boys and Girls Within a Slave Society. In: African American Childhoods. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-73165-7_4
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