Salem Normal School and Charlotte Forten
Corner of Broad and Summer Streets (now, Salem State College)

As the demand for accessible and high-quality education grew in the mid-nineteenth century, the dichotomy between what was available to the different classes and genders was significant. Increasingly, leading thinkers and social reformers like Horace Mann (who married Mary Peabody, see S13), called for public support of the free common school and for standards (or, “norms”) in teaching that would professionalize the field. Horace believed deeply that a democratic society should educate its young, and he decried the poor state of public education. Accessible learning, rigorous and consistent teacher training, and strong public support of this effort would increase literacy and enable all people to participate more fully as citizens.

As Joan M. Maloney wrote in her history of the Salem Normal School, “by the 1840s, a number of prescient Salem citizens recognized the urgency of educational reform.”⁷³ The Governor of Massachusetts had already opened three Normal Schools elsewhere in the Commonwealth, and when a fourth site was needed for what would become the nation’s eleventh, Salem citizens lobbied hard, arguing that “Salem… was a community of men who were at once scholars, dedicated civil servants, and daring entrepreneurs. From the start Puritanism ensured the welding of learning to godliness, and Salem was one of the first settlements to provide a free common school.”⁷⁴ This building was dedicated on September 14, 1854 “with all the pomp the city and state could muster,” and the Governor declared, “we welcome this day… her influence hence shall extend/Til precepts received by the few/To thousands shall lend.”⁷⁵ The first class, consisting of seventy-two young women, was admitted that fall. In 1932, the college changed its name to Salem Teachers College. It became the State College at Salem in 1959, and Salem State College in 1977. In 1972, one of the college’s professors, Mildred Berman, brought a class action suit against the state’s Board of Regents to ensure equal pay for women faculty. The suit was finally settled in 1988 in Mildred’s favor. Also in 1972, with the growing popularity of women’s studies as a discipline, the Florence Luscomb Women’s Center opened. It was named for the renowned suffragist, labor reformer, and peace activist from Lowell and Boston. In 1990, the Charlotte Forten Room in the College Library was dedicated, and that same year the Governor of Massachusetts appointed Nancy D. Harrington president of Salem State College. She was the first woman, the first alumna/us, and the first Salem resident to achieve this distinction.

One of the college’s earliest students was Charlotte Forten (1838-1914), who was born in Philadelphia and arrived in Salem in 1854. She was sent north to the Higginson Grammar School because Salem’s schools were desegregated by this time. Charlotte lived with Salem’s prominent Remond family (see S36) who were then living on Dean Street, and Sarah Parker Remond became a role model for Charlotte as her mother had just died. Much like the Remonds of Salem, Charlotte’s family was well educated and active in the antislavery movement. In 1855, Charlotte began to study at Salem’s Normal School where she graduated in 1856, becoming the first African American to do so; she began her teaching career at the Epes Grammar School in Salem. In her spare time, Charlotte wrote poetry and kept a journal that provides us with most of what is known about her. (The Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum owns a copy of this journal; see S15.) The outbreak of the Civil War created the opportunity for Charlotte to teach in Port Royal, South Carolina, where she was pleased to educate the children of recently-freed slaves who would otherwise not have had any educational opportunity. In 1864, Charlotte returned to Philadelphia and spent the next twelve years writing and publishing poems and essays including two articles about her South Carolina experiences in the Atlantic Monthly. Charlotte also returned to teaching, and in 1878 she married Francis Grimké, the nephew of Sarah and Angelina Grimké (see S17).

Notes
73. Joan M. Maloney, Salem Normal School 1854-1905: A Tradition of Excellence (Acton, Mass., 1990), 2.

74. Ibid., 1.

75. Ibid., 21.