What Happened to Elizabeth Jennings?
ELIZABETH JENNINGS WAS A HERO in the eyes of the black community as well as white supporters of equal rights for blacks, but there were hard times ahead.
In 1859, four years after her victory in court, her beloved father died at the age of sixty-eight. He did not live to see the election of Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War, or the end of slavery in the United States.
A year after Thomas Jennings died, Elizabeth married a man named Charles Graham, a native of St. Croix, one of three islands that today constitute the U.S. Virgin Islands. Two years after they married, Elizabeth and Charles were blessed with the birth of a baby boy. He was named Thomas after Elizabeth’s father.
But Thomas, when only a year old, became ill and died, an all-too-common fate for infants and children at the time. His death happened, by coincidence, during the Civil War draft riots, when horrible violence rocked Manhattan from July 13 through July 16, 1863. Much of the brutality was aimed at black bystanders. Elizabeth and Charles took a considerable risk when they insisted on escorting Thomas’s body to Brooklyn for burial.
The riots were so vicious that many black residents fled the city as soon as they could. Elizabeth Jennings, her husband, and her mother were among them. They moved to Monmouth County, New Jersey, at the seashore, to live with Elizabeth’s sister Matilda.
The greatest crisis in U.S. history, the Civil War, which pitted the South and the North against each other, raised hopes among blacks that slavery in the South might end at last.
When the first shots were fired in 1861, many Americans assumed the war would end quickly. Instead, the war would last four years and cost an estimated 750,000 lives.
President Lincoln’s signing in 1863 of the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves in states that were in rebellion, was a day of great joy to those opposed to “the evil institution,” as slavery was sometimes called. In reality, it took the victory of the North’s Union army in 1865 and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment for all the slaves to be freed.
Not everyone in the North was pleased with the prospect of millions of blacks suddenly being set free. Working-class whites, assuming that many of the former slaves would head north, were worried about losing their jobs.
With the help of antiwar newspapers, politicians opposed to Lincoln had been fanning the flames of anxiety among the white working class since Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860. By the time Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, many white workers were in a state of panic.
In New York City a tipping point occurred after a change in the federal draft law, which dictated the rules for required military service. The law was seen as unfair to poor and working-class people. Men who could pay three hundred dollars (a very large sum at the time) could avoid being drafted.
In the early morning of July 13, 1863, on the west side of Manhattan along Eighth and Ninth avenues, the riots began. At first the white rioters, many of whom were Irish immigrants, vented their rage on military and government buildings. Within a few hours, however, rioters began to focus their anger on any black person they encountered.
During five days of rioting, countless black men, women, and children were injured. Eleven black men were lynched. Black-owned businesses were torched. The Colored Orphan Asylum at Fifth Avenue and Forty-third Street was ransacked by a mob of several thousand men and women. Amazingly, all the children were evacuated before the building was burned to the ground.
White people who tried to intervene were also attacked. Rioters destroyed the property of a few whites who were known to be sympathetic to blacks, including the daughter of a well-known abolitionist and two women who were married to black men.
By the end of the rioting 119 people were verified as having been killed. It is one of the largest single incidents of civil disorder in the history of the United States. In response to the riots the federal government did back down, reducing the number of men who were selected for the draft.
In 1867 Elizabeth’s husband died. Charles Graham was just thirty-four years old. He and Elizabeth had been married for seven years. They’d had no more children after Thomas.
Elizabeth, her sister Matilda, and their mother continued to live at the New Jersey seashore, in or near Eatontown, New Jersey, for several more years. In 1871, they returned to Manhattan, where they resided at 543 Broome Street, and Elizabeth began working as a teacher at the 41st Street School.
Freedman’s Bank record filled out by a clerk but signed by Elizabeth Jennings (Graham) at the bottom.
Two years later, in 1873, Elizabeth’s mother died. Elizabeth found comfort and meaning in her work. She found a new place to live, a house at 237 West Forty-first Street. She continued to teach children for the rest of her life.
On April 5, 1895, along with two other black women, she opened, in her home on West Forty-first Street, a groundbreaking school, the first free kindergarten for black children in New York City. At the same time, and also in her home, she started a small but formal lending library. She stocked it with classic works of literature and loaned the books for free to people in her neighborhood.
The same woman who had made the first major breakthrough in ending the segregated streetcar system in New York remained dedicated to progress, justice, education, and equality. When she died in 1901 at the age of seventy-four, in an upstairs room while children played downstairs, it was the end of a life well lived. Elizabeth Jennings left behind an important legacy: she provided an example of how an individual person, if strong and determined, can make the world a better place, especially if she works toward a common goal with the help of a supportive community.
The First Free Kindergarten for Colored Children in New York City
When Elizabeth Jennings (under her married name Elizabeth J. Graham) started a kindergarten in her home with two other black women, Mrs. James Herbert Morse and Mrs. Edward Curtis, she was participating in a social movement in education that was considered cutting edge.
While we may take the idea of kindergarten for granted today, it was a startling idea when it was introduced in Germany in 1837 by a man named Friedrich Fröbel. He believed that playtime, if carefully supervised by teachers, was more important for young children than learning to read, write, and solve math problems. His idea was that games, songs, and activities would allow young children to mature and flourish.
Fröbel’s idea caught on and spread to the United States. At first, kindergartens, where they existed, were private. New York and Boston took the lead on starting kindergartens that were free, allowing less fortunate children to enroll.
By starting a free kindergarten for black children—the first one in New York City— Elizabeth Jennings and her cofounders were pioneers in the battle for equal opportunity in education, a struggle that continues to this day in many parts of the United States.
A magazine article written by H. Cordelia Ray, one of ten black women chosen to serve on an executive committee to provide oversight of the kindergarten, provides a firsthand look. The school was financed by patrons (donors), Miss Ray wrote. While the race of the donors wasn’t mentioned in the article, the context implies that they were most likely black.
An experienced kindergarten teacher named Leonie G. Rickard, who was probably black, was hired to be in charge of the school. The number of students is not known.
Miss Ray’s description of the kindergarten reveals her enthusiasm. “To visit the school-room is a delightful way to spend a morning. . . . Pretty pictures of flowers, fruit and child life adorn the walls; some of the work of the children is arranged for inspection, and everything around is bright and tasteful. . . . But by far the most attractive feature is in the little children themselves . . . who are either seated at their desks, engaged in some handiwork adapted to their tiny fingers, or playing one of their many beautiful games. It is stimulating to watch their artless enjoyment and graceful movements . . . while we realize that underneath the outer manifestations are the underlying principles being so unconsciously learned.”
Miss Ray also mentioned the outdoor activities that were central to Fröbel’s philosophy. “A yard connected with the house in which the school is situated has been carefully prepared, where the little ones have planted seeds and roots, and where they have an opportunity to exercise and play,” Miss Ray wrote. “Thus a love of the beautiful will be instilled into these youthful minds in accordance with the idea of the great founder of the kindergarten system.”
In addition to the kindergarten, two other programs sponsored by the same group were being held in the house, Miss Ray wrote. One was a sewing school on Saturday mornings for older pupils. The other was a small lending library. It was named by donors after the person who was serving as the librarian: Elizabeth Jennings Graham.