by Shannon Butler
If you are a parent, then you know just how important it is that your child receives a proper education. Many parents are struggling right now with their children doing classwork from home, or limited schooling altogether. But what if you lived in a time or place where you child might be turned away from a good school, just because of the color of their skin? It should be noted that it wasn’t all that long ago that such concerns existed, and one parent, right here in Poughkeepsie, decided to do something about it.
Joseph Rhodes made a good deal of money in his business of textile dyeing. It was estimated that he had an estate valued around $3,000 in the 1870s. He became a respected businessman within the city of Poughkeepsie as well as Middletown, where he extended his business. Joseph lived in a time when schools were still separated based on color; in fact, Joseph was born when the idea that blacks should be educated at all, in their own schools, was just coming into common practice. By the time he became successful, he joined the conversation of equality when it came to voting rights and was very much against the idea of sending his children to an all-black school. He even went so far as to boycott the local black school by sending two of his children to a desegregated school in the small town of Waterloo, NY, located in the Finger Lakes region of the state (which made for one heck of a long trip in those days). With his wealth, he had the ability to send his children off to other, more accepting schools, but most were not so lucky.
By May of 1873, the New York State’s Civil Rights Law was making the news when it came to the subject of education, since not all local school boards were eager to jump on the desegregation bandwagon. Rhodes undoubtedly heard the news of nearby Newburgh schools beginning to integrate their students, and closing all of the black schools. Inspired by this, and knowing full well that there was no legal reason for his children not to go to the same schools as white children, he decided to send his two daughters, Josephine and Marietta, to a white school in September of 1873. The Poughkeepsie Eagle wrote that the first school they tried to attend was not acceptable. The children were allowed to stay, but when a white child hit Marietta, both she and her sister were sent home (and not, it should be noted, the white child who did the hitting). The school finally turned the girls out. Its reasoning was said to be, first, that they were at the wrong school for their district, and second, that Josephine was considered to be too far advanced for this school.
A day or so later, the girls made their way to a white school on Church Street. By that point, their story had been passed around and school desegregation was now the talk of Poughkeepsie. Feelings were quite mixed on the matter, the President of the Board of Education, Judge Eldridge believed that “the city is one school district, and that when the Board provided a separate school for colored children, it fulfilled the letter of the law.” Meanwhile, others felt that the schools shouldn’t interfere when it came to color. The principal of this school on Church Street, a woman named Miss Vail, was well aware of the importance of equal education and ready to accept the girls, as well as discipline any of the white children who resorted to name calling. By June of 1874, the black schools had closed up and it appeared as if Poughkeepsie was entering a new age. Josephine went on to become the first black graduate of Poughkeepsie High School in 1879. However, the principal of the high school thought it best that Josephine not attend the ceremony, even though she was “remarkably proficient in all of her studies.”
Check out this neat painting of a girl in school in 1889 by the artist Edward Lamson Henry entitled Kept In, which is located at the Fenimore Art Museum.
Resources:
The Daily Freeman – 4 Sep 1873
Poughkeepsie Eagle – 25 Jun 1879
The Brooklyn Union – 25 Jun 1879
“Black Education in New York State: From Colonial to Modern Times” by Carleton Mabee, 1979. LH 370.9747 M
Images:
01 – Photo of the original Poughkeepsie Free High School where Josephine graduated.
02 – Image of the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper article from 25 June 1879.
