Conference this week on "Education in Black and White"
A series of events and panel discussions on the history of African Americans and schooling in Philadelphia are taking place this month, including a conference this Thursday through Saturday On "The Institute for Colored Youth and the Ongoing Struggle for Education."
The ICY, founded in Philadelphia in 1837, is now Cheyney University.
"Education in Black and White" is billed as a "citywide festival" and is part of the "hidden history" project of the Moonstone Arts Center, an arts education organization with a focus on the history of the African American community in Philadelphia.
Events will be held at Local 1199C of the Hospital Workers Union; the Writing Project at the University of Pennsylvania, the African American History Museum, the National Museum of American Jewish History, and branches of the Free Library.
Partners also include the Pennsylvania Abolition Society (which still exists), WURD, the Philadelphia Cultural Fund, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.
On Thursday, a panel on the founding of the Institute for Colored Youth will feature local writers Dan Biddle and Murray Dubin, who wrote Tasting Freedom: Octavius V. Catto and the Battle for Equality in Civil War America. Catto was one of the early graduates of ICY who was a key civil rights leader fighting for African American voting rights and was murdered at age 32.
History professors Judith Giesberg, Linda M. Perkins, and Kabria Bumgartner will discuss the women of the ICY, including Fannie Jackson Coppin and Charlotte Forten. Coppin, the Conference this week on "Education in Black and White" | Philadelphia Public School Notebook: