Black Settlement In America

Black settlement houses as well as black churches served as centers for the community, offering classes, forums, and lectures. Middle class black men and women formed literary societies, which not only brought in speakers and held discussions, but also provided training for both men and women in many different aspects of community life and social activism. Beginning around 1890, black women began to speak out on various social justice topics. Women such as Frances Ellen Watkins Harper spoke at the World’s Congress of Representative Women in Chicago. In her speech, Harper said that the “world has need of the spiritual aid that women can give for the social advancement and moral development of the human race” (Bair, 2000, p. 336). Other black women, particularly Anna Julia Cooper and Ida B. Wells, protested white racism, black disenfranchisement, and lynching. African Americans were going public in their struggle to build community institutions, such as schools, churches, and businesses, within the African American world, and for integration into American institutional life (Bair, 2000).
Black delinquents typically were excluded from juvenile institutions, which meant that they were incarcerated in adult almshouses, workhouses, jails, and prisons (Ward, 2012). In the 1830s, the officials of the New York House of Refuge feared that admitting black youth to the existing House of Refuge would be “injurious to our institution” (Ward, 2012, p. 53). Seeing no alternative, the board of the House of Refuge appealed to the state legislature and to the public for funding to establish a separate black refuge. One was subsequently opened in 1835. This approach to dealing with black children in need of social services continued throughout the19th century and well into the 20th