Impressive, but more impressive is someone making the point that in Colonial Virginia, pre-dating the founding of the U.S., one of the very few schools, one allied with the second-oldest post-secondary school in the colonies that would become the U.S. (Laval , was educating blacks regardless of status of servitude, and both black women as well as men.
I wonder if Harvard had a companion school? Surely those enlightened Puritans must have been doing that sort of out reach, while the Southerners were cultivating the sort of people who would give us Know-Nothings (that is sarcasm-—and for full disclosure I had people on the Mayflower, and also some in Virginia dating back at least before the founding of Harvard)
Two Mexican schools dated back to the mid-16th century, and so have both Harvard and Laval beaten soundly, but only one of them (the older one) has been in continuous operation. The other (the Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico) operated continuously from 1551-1865, but then closed. A brilliant move resulting likely from a combination of post-colonialism and undermining the Church. Without any particular grounds, the University of Mexico, founded in 1910, claims to be its successor institution.
Interesting, thank you for the education.
I am sure you'll be pleased to learn that Harvard was a desperate "buzzer beater" shot at depriving William & Mary of the claim of being first. Harvard was a ridiculous laughingstock institution hosted in a barn and stocked with a curriculum of store-bought pedestrian books taught by a founding generation of semi-literates having no degrees. Harvard's first round of graduates were just a bunch of self-promoting midwits who granted degrees upon each other. At the time of its founding, William & Mary greatly surpassed Harvard in quality and reputation.
We frequently hear that it was illegal to teach blacks in the south how to read yet when facts are known there were schools for blacks and there were literate blacks.
Harvard had an Indian School from 1640 till the end of the century. They translated the Bible into at least one of the Indian languages. Later when there were blacks in the colonies Harvard hired many of them and have been severely criticized for it. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t