service points out that an astonishing ninety-one percent of working black women in Philadelphia were employed as domestic servants at the time of the eleventh census. 86 The lives of the women of the Institute for Colored Youth are particularly impressive given that statistic and the expectations that would have gone with it. Many more likely echoed their experience but have been lost to history. They are all too often only found in the society pages as guests or hosts to parties and luncheons when they may have achieved as much or more than the women discussed here. Modern pedagogical theory believes that a student’s success depends largely on the expectations of his or her teachers. Whether recognized or not, their legacies are felt and appreciated by women of every color.
86
W.E.B. Dubois, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study,� (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1899), 428.
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