Working for Higher Education: Advancing Black Women’s Rights in the 1850s

Woodstock Manual Labor Institute

Black and white photograph of building.

A 1957 view of the last remaining building of the Woodstock Manual Labor Institute. Photo courtesy of the Lenawee County Historical Society.

 

The Woodstock Manual Labor Institute was established in 1844 in Woodstock, Lenawee County, Michigan, by Prior (sometimes spelled Prier) Foster.[1] The Institute received its official charter in 1848, when it gained greater notoriety and remained active through the mid-1850s.[2,3] According to Foster, the Woodstock Manual Labor Institute was the first school of its kind to receive an official charter from the state legislature.[4] The school was strategically placed; Michigan had more progressive rights for African Americans compared to many other states at the time. As Foster himself proclaimed, African Americans in Michigan enjoyed “all the rights of the whites, except that of suffrage; and I hope this will not long be denied.”[5]

The first teacher at the school, recruited by Foster, was a woman named Thalia E. Strong.[6] Woodstock Manual Labor Institute was inclusive: “The doors of this institute were thrown open to all desirous of securing an education, irrespective of color, sex, or religious affiliations…”[7] The school was meant to be an educational haven for not only African Americans, but for their allies as well.

The Woodstock Manual Labor Institute was situated on roughly five hundred acres of land, with eight buildings, including a library with fourteen hundred volumes, and seventy acres of the school’s property were used for cultivation by students.[8,9] Students could either pay tuition fees or earn their room and board by performing manual labor. However, the Woodstock Manual Labor Institute also offered a more academic curriculum, such as chemistry, philosophy, algebra, history, grammar, music lessons, and a variety of languages.[10] Foster believed that through both intellectual education and manual labor, the Woodstock Institute would provide African Americans better career opportunities, increased earning potential, and therefore, more power.

References

[1] “Circular of the Woodstock Manual Labor Institute,” The North Star, 12 May 1848, Accessible Archives.
[2] Prior Foster, “Woodstock Manual Labor Institute, for Colored People and Others,” The National Era, 6 April 1848. Accessible Archives.
[3] “Friend Jones,” Anti-Slavery Bugle, 3 September 1859, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers.
[4] Prior Foster, “Woodstock Manual Labor Institute, for Colored People and Others,” The National Era, 6 April 1848, Accessible Archives
[5] “Circular of the Woodstock Manual Labor Institute,” The North Star, 12 May 1848, Accessible Archives.
[6] Prier Foster, “Woodstock Manual Labor Institute, Report of the General Agent,” National Anti-Slavery Standard, 9 October 1845, Accessible Archives.
[7] Richard Illenden Bonner. Memoirs of Lenawee County, Michigan: From the Earliest Historical Times Down to the Present, Including a Genealogical and Biographical Record of Representative Families in Lenawee County, Volume I. (Western Historical Association, 1909), 532.
[8] “Circular of the Woodstock Manual Labor Institute,” The North Star, 12 May 1848, Accessible Archives.
[9] “Instruction to Colored People,” Anti-Slavery Bugle, 1 June 1850, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Lib. of Congress.
[10] “Woodstock Manual Labor Institute,” Anti-Slavery Bugle, 27 March 1852, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.

Credits

Written by Lila Gyory, History 213 taught by Sharla Fett, Occidental College, Spring 2016.
Edited and revised by Samantha de Vera and Kelli Coles, University of Delaware.