废奴主义者和亚洲博彩网站前身机构的创始人
默蒂拉·米纳是教育非裔美国妇女斗争中的标志性人物，她提醒人们坚持不懈的力量。 Her efforts laid the foundation for what is today – the University of the District of Columbia.
Born March 4, 1815, in Brookfield, NY, Myrtilla Miner was one of 12 brothers and sisters. 米纳和她的农村家庭靠采摘啤酒花来维持生计。 作为一个体弱多病的孩子，她把时间都花在了读书上，并培养了对学习的热爱。 Despite her and her family’s enduring financial hardships, Miner was eventually able to earn her teaching degree from the Young Ladies’ Domestic Seminary, which had been founded in 1833 by the abolitionist Hiram H. Kellogg.
After earning her degree, Miner secured teaching positions in Rochester, NY, and Providence, RI, before moving to the South in 1846 to fulfill the obligations of her education—teaching plantation owners’ daughters in Whitesville, Mississippi, at the Newton Female Institute. 在那里，她亲眼目睹了奴隶制的恐怖，并发誓要教年轻的奴隶如何阅读。 但是她为他们上课的提议被拒绝了，而且被认为是非法和不道德的。 米纳在这所学校待了两年，后来得了一场重病，几乎没有生存的机会，她被送回了家。
It was Miner’s deep determination to teach African Americans that helped her eventually recover from her illness. 她开始筹集资金创办一所学校，并联系了弗雷德里克·道格拉斯，他最初对她的前景并不确定。
Frederick Douglass considered Miner’s proposal to be risky, stressing “the dangers she would encounter, the hardships she would have to endure and what seemed to me at the time certain failure of the enterprise after all she might do and suffer to make it successful.”
But Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, gave Miner $1,000 from the proceeds of her book to help establish a permanent location for the school.
Miner’s plans were met with heated opposition—harassment from mobs, physical violence and fire—in Washington, D.C., where slavery was still legal.
但在1851年，米纳开始在一个小房间里教六名学生，这些学生都是被解放的奴隶的孩子，这就建立了有色人种女子师范学校。 Miner’s goal was to teach them to be teachers themselves so they could elevate their population through education. Historian Constance Green noted that the school offered “a better education than that available to most white children.”
从学校一开始，Miner就面临着针对老师和学生的骚扰。 Mobs attempted to burn down Miner’s school. 这所学校遭到了白人社区和前市长沃尔特·雷诺克斯等城市领导人的正式反对。 1857年5月6日，莱诺克斯在《国家情报报》上痛斥米纳女士和她的学校。 尽管不断受到偏见、骚扰和暴力威胁的攻击，迈纳仍然不屈不挠，决心教非裔美国女孩。 最后，她获胜了。 One of her students remarked that she was “one of the bravest women I have ever known.”
到1857年，由于健康状况不佳，迈纳不得不退出积极参与学校，但到那时，学校已经很成熟，约翰·霍普金斯和亨利·沃德·比彻等名人都在董事会任职。 然而，米纳仍然设法继续她的工作，甚至在1860年帮助扑灭了一所学校的纵火案。
不幸的是，同一年，米纳不得不关闭她的学校，但后来在内战后重新开放。
1864年12月17日，在华盛顿特区，Myrtilla Miner死于一次马车事故的并发症。 她活着看到了1863年《解放奴隶宣言》的实现，但没有看到内战的结束。 Her story would hardly be known if it had not been for a brief memoir of her life written by Ellen O’Connor in 1885.
Throughout the years, Miner’s school underwent numerous name changes and incorporation into other institutions, but it held the distinction of educating the majority of African-American elementary school teachers employed in the D.C. schools throughout World War II. The Miner Building is now part of Howard University’s School of Education. The university still has a small plaque there acknowledging Myrtilla Miner’s contributions.
Though her efforts to educate free African-American girls were a moderate and indirect approach to ending slavery, the University of the District of Columbia traces the history of public higher education for African Americans in the city to Myrtilla Miner’s School.
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