The Rasin Institute
At the time, 1837, there was not one school in the state of Michigan that would educate a person of color. That was until Laura S. Haviland, her husband Charles, and her brother Harvey Smith, opened the raisin Institute. Students who attended the Raisin Institute were sought out for teaching positions from around the world, and it was seen as one of the best schools in the state. The fact that the Raisin Institute usually had one to three African American students at a time turned away many people. Mrs. Haviland was told by hundreds of potential students that if she were to not allow African American students to attend the school they would attend, however Mrs. Haviland believed in her abolition principles and continued to allow African American students and Caucasian students to learn together. (Haviland, 35)
Segreagation & Race
There were students who came from one hundred miles away to learn at the Raisin Institute. Mrs. Haviland was later told that if she were to stop allowing African American students the Raisin Institute would, with no doubt, be the most popular school in the state of Michigan, but again, she did not waver in her beliefs. Mrs. Haviland commended one student in her book, A Woman’s Life-Work: Labors and Experiences of Laura S. Haviland. This student was brought to the Raisin Institute by her father to become a qualified teacher. In her grammar class she sat next to an African American man, she went back to her room and wrote her father that she no longer wanted to attend school at the Raisin Institute but she did not say why. Her father wrote her back and said that he had sacrificed a lot to get her there and that she needed to stay for her allotted time. She stayed at the Raisin Institute and was shocked to see that this same African American man was also in her advanced arithmetic class. As her time at the Institute passed, she asked the African American man for help as much as she did any other student. As time went by her prejudice left and she treated the African American students with as much respect as she did her fellow Caucasian students. (Haviland, 36)
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