Catholic School for Indigent Orphans

The Institute Catholique, also known as Ecole Des Orphelins Indigents (Catholic School for Indigent Orphans), and the Couvent School, was a school founded in the Faubourg Marigny district of New Orleans in 1840 dedicated to providing a free education to African-American orphans. It was the first school in the United States to offer a free education to African-American children. It also served the non-orphan children of free people of color ("gens de couleur libre"), who paid a modest tuition. It operated as a distinct entity until 1915.

The school was financed from a trust established in the will of Madame Marie Couvent, the African-American widow of Bernard Couvent, one of the most commercially successful free men of color in New Orleans. The concept of educating African-Americans was opposed by some members of the white community in New Orleans, and the establishment of the trust for the school was challenged in court. The widow died in 1837, and when the original executor of the will failed to forcefully implement its terms, a group of ten leading Afro-Creole intellectuals residing in New Orleans formed The Catholic Institute for the Instruction of Indigent Orphans. This group successfully sued in court to obtain control of the widow's estate. The courts did not finally rule in favor of this group until 1846.

The charter authorizing the Institute Catholique to function as a corporation was received from the state of Louisiana in 1847, and the school opened in 1848, renting facilities in the Fauborg Marigny suburb just east of the French Quarter while awaiting construction of a permanent building on the land donated by Madame Couvent. Felice Coulon Cailloux, wife of Andre Cailloux, later a hero in the American Civil War, initially served as the principal of the school while it operated in temporary quarters.

By 1850, the city of New Orleans had a population of approximately 150,000. Of this population, 15,000 were free people of color, and 15,000 were slaves. The city had a three tier social structure, at the top of which were free whites, in the middle were free people of color, and at the bottom were slaves. Free people of color could own property, own businesses, and enter contracts, but could not vote, marry whites, or send their children to the public schools of the city, which were established in 1841. This rankled the French inspired republican idealism of the Afro-Creole intelligentsia, many of whom had been educated in France.

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