Bound by international anti-slave trade agreements, the Ottoman state became actively involved in the lives of emancipated Africans in the late nineteenth-century. New interventionist programs developed in parallel to the traditional way in which emancipated African were cared for, which was up until then largely undertaken by private individuals or families. Emblematic of the Ottoman state’s new role is the construction of a specialized ‘guest-house’ in Izmir and the orders in 1890 to send as many emancipated Africans as possible to it. In this new institution, they were to be cared for, trained, and integrated into the fabric of late Ottoman society. Those too young were reportedly placed with other non-African orphans, street urchins, and beggars in Izmir’s School of Arts and Crafts (Mekteb-i Sanayi). This paper will compare how rescued African children were cared for in the Mekteb-i Sanayi with how they were cared for in private households in Izmir at the same time. I will argue that, while seemingly different, the children in each location underwent a similar education and transformation. Thus, despite growing state intervention into the lives of all Ottoman citizens in this period, these novel mechanisms may not have dramatically altered the trajectory of these children as might be assumed. It did, however, succeed in making a part of the population more knowable and had a greater role in shaping and controlling their labour. To understand the experiences of African children in the Izmir Mekteb-i Sanayi, I will draw on Ottoman yearbooks (salnames) for 1890s Izmir, as well as research on Ottoman orphanages in general. For traditional, private emancipation in Izmir, this study will employ a ‘reading against the grain’ of the rich and untapped memoirs of novelist Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil who witnessed this process first hand in the same time period. The novelty of this paper is multifaceted. First, it bridges the existing historiographical barriers between Ottoman slavery studies and other studies on social projects the state undertook in the late nineteenth-century. Second, it brings to light the experiences of the most vulnerable segment of the emancipated slave population, the children. Finally, this paper will also break new ground in shifting the focus away from the history of the emancipated in Istanbul which currently dominates the historiography.