Known Information
Mary Elizabeth Reeder was born in 1870 to Thomas and Martha Reeder
Sources
1880; Census Place: Washington, Washington, District of Columbia, District of Columbia; Roll: 123; Page: 147B;Enumeration District: 050
Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division, The New York Public Library. (1880). City of Washington, statistical maps Retrieved from https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/8415c030-0053-0135-53d1-0a7dead16a1b
Asch, C. M., & Musgrove, G. D. (2019). Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation’s Capital. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Mary Reeder, age 10, attended school in 1880 while living with her parents in Jackson Alley. She most likely attended School No. 5 in the second division based on its geographic proximity to Jackson Alley.
Education in post Civil War Washington
In 1862, Congress directed ten percent of tax money toward primary schools for Black students, and an independent Board of Trustees was established, which included S. J Bowen, who later became the mayor of DC in 1868. By the 1870s, the Board of Trustees was replaced by a superintendent of schools. Advocates demanded parity between both school systems schools and “the haphazard postwar collection of semiprivate black schools had solidified into a stable system of black public schools run by the Board of Trustees.” (Chocolate City)
stories of Then 