During the era of chattel slavery in the United States, the proper education of enslaved African Americans (with exception made for religious instruction) was highly discouraged, and eventually made illegal in most of the Southern states.[1]
After 1831, the prohibition against educating enslaved persons was extended in some states to free blacks as well. Regardless of the legality of educating people of color, people in this demographic ultimately received limited access to education in both the north and south.[2]
Slave owners saw literacy as a threat to the institution of slavery and their financial investment in it; as a North Carolina statute stated: "Teaching slaves to read and write, tends to excite dissatisfaction in their minds, and to produce insurrection and rebellion."[3]:136
Literacy (the ability to read) enabled the enslaved to read the writings of people that were advocating for an end to slavery, (abolitionists). They openly spoke and wrote about the abolition of slavery and described the slave revolution in Haiti of 1791–1804 and the end of slavery in the British Empire in 1833.
Learning to read also allowed slaves to learn that thousands of enslaved individuals had escaped, often with the assistance of the Underground Railroad, to safe refuges in the Northern states and Canada. Literacy also was believed to make the enslaved unhappy at best, insolent and sullen at worst. As stated by prominent Washington lawyer Elias B. Caldwell:
The more you improve the condition of these people, the more you cultivate their minds, the more miserable you make them, in their present state. You give them a higher relish for those privileges which they can never attain, and turn what we intend for a blessing [slavery] into a curse. No, if they must remain in their present situation, keep them in the lowest state of degradation and ignorance. The nearer you bring them to the condition of brutes, the better chance do you give them of possessing their apathy.[4]
Nonetheless, both free and enslaved African Americans continued to learn to read as a result of the sometimes clandestine efforts of free African Americans, sympathetic whites, and informal schools that operated furtively during this period. In addition, slaves used storytelling, music, and crafts to pass along cultural traditions and other information.[5]
In the Northern states, African Americans sometimes had access to formal schooling, and were more likely to have basic reading and writing skills. The Quakers were important in establishing education programs in the North in the years before and after the Revolutionary War.[6]
During the U.S. colonial period, several prominent religious groups both saw the conversion of slaves as a spiritual obligation, and the ability to read scriptures was seen as part of this process for Protestants. The Great Awakening served as a catalyst for encouraging education for all members of society.[citation needed]
While reading was encouraged in religious instruction, writing often was not. Writing was seen as a mark of status, unnecessary for many members of society, including slaves. This is due to the fact that many had to learn how to read to be able to write. Runaway Wallace Turnage "learnt" how to read and write "during that time [of his enslavement] and since [he] escaped the clutches of those who held [him] in slavery."[7] It is believed that he learned with the help of the slaves who helped him escape to different sites: for example, someone may have taught him how to read directions to get to the next town. Memorization, catechisms, and Scripture formed the basis of what education was available.
Despite the lack of importance generally given to writing instruction, there were some notable exceptions; perhaps the most famous of these was Phillis Wheatley, whose poetry won admiration on both sides of the Atlantic.[8]
The end of slavery and, with it, the legal prohibition of slave education did not mean that education for former slaves or their descendants became widely available. Racial segregation in schools, de jure and then de facto, and inadequate funding of schools for African Americans, if they existed at all, continued into the twenty-first century (2022).[9]
Some current advocates for Public School Reform, cite the comparison between the goals of prohibiting education to maintain slavery, compared to the modern phenomenon of fighting school reform and upholding the current system, of underfunding and miseducation in an effort to uphold the school to prison pipeline.[10]
Legislation and prohibitions
Illustration of black students excluded from school, 1839
South Carolina was established in 1670 by English colonists who sought to create a profitable agricultural colony. The colony's economy was heavily reliant on the cultivation of rice, indigo, and other cash crops, which depended on the labor of enslaved Africans. Educating enslaved people was seen as disruptive to this economic model because it threatened to undermine the strict control that slaveholders exerted over their labor force.
Literate enslaved individuals could potentially gain access to abolitionist ideas, communicate more effectively with one another, or even forge passes, all of which posed significant risks to the stability and profitability of the plantation system. For planters in South Carolinia, maintaining ignorance among the enslaved people was crucial to preserving their personal economic interests and ensuring that their workforce remained compliant and manageable. The primary methods leveraged to maintain ignorance among enslaved people was 1) Lack of education and 2) Indoctrination of religion with a highly edited version of the Bible, known as the Slave Bible.
In 1739 a group of enslaved people, collaborated to form an uprising later called the Stono Rebellion. The Stono Rebellion was led by an enslaved African named Jemmy, also known as Cato in some historical accounts. Jemmy and his fellow rebels were part of a group of about 20 enslaved Africans who began the uprising.
South Carolina immediately passed the laws the following year prohibiting the educating of enslaved people. There were no limitations on reading or drawing, however it became illegal in South Carolina to teach enslaved people to write.
This legislation was a response to growing fears among plantation owners concerning the spread of abolitionist materials, forged passes, and other writings that might encourage enslaved people to think about the idea of freedom. The South Carolina State General Assembly drafted legislation that reads as follows: "Be it therefore Enacted by the Authority aforesaid, That all and every Person and Persons whatsoever, who shall hereafter teach or cause any Slave to be taught to write, or shall use to employ any slave as a Scribe in any Manner of Writing whatsoever, hereafter taught to write, every such offense forfeit the Sum of One Hundred Pounds current Money."[11]
While the law does not clarify any consequences for the slaves who might attain this more highly prized form of literacy, the financial consequences for teachers are clear.
In 1759, Georgia modeled its own ban on teaching slaves to write after South Carolina's earlier legislation. Again, reading was not prohibited. Throughout the colonial era, reading instruction was tied to the spread of Christianity, so it did not suffer from restrictive legislation until much later.[12] "Georgia, in 1829, made it unlawful for whites, slaves and free blacks to teach a slave or free black 'to read or write, either written or printed characters.'"[13]
The most oppressive limits on slave education were a reaction to Nat Turner's Revolt in Southampton County, Virginia, during the summer of 1831. This event not only caused shock waves across the slave-holding South, but it had a particularly far-reaching impact on education over the next three decades. The fears of slave insurrections and the spread of abolitionist material and ideology led to radical restrictions on gatherings, travel, and—of course—literacy. The ignorance of the slaves was considered necessary to the security of the slaveholders.[14] Not only did owners fear the spread of specifically abolitionist materials, they did not want slaves to question their authority; thus, reading and reflection were to be prevented at any cost.
Virginians "immediately, as an act of retaliation or vengeance, abolished every colored school within their borders; and having dispersed the pupils, ordered the teachers to leave the State forthwith, and never more to return."[15]
While Mississippi already had laws designed to prevent slave literacy, in 1841 the state legislature passed a law that required all free African Americans to leave the state so that they would not be able to educate or incite the slave population. Other states, such as South Carolina, followed suit. The same legislation required that any black preacher would have to be given permission to speak before appearing in front of a congregation. Delaware passed in 1831 a law that prevented the meeting of a dozen or more blacks late at night; additionally, black preachers were to petition a judge or justice of the peace before speaking before any assembly. "South Carolina law enhanced the penalties for teaching slaves to read - writing had long been banned - in 1834."[13]
In 1833, Alabama enacted a law that fined anyone who undertook a slave's education between $250 and $550; the law also prohibited any assembly of African Americans—slave or free—unless five slave owners were present or an African-American preacher had previously been licensed by an approved denomination.
Even North Carolina, which had previously allowed free African-American children to attend schools alongside whites, eventually responded to fears of insurrection. In 1830, North Carolina passed a criminal law that said that "[i]f any slave shall teach or attempt to teach, any other slave to read or write," that slave shall be punished by up to thirty-nine lashes.[16] By 1836, the public education of all African Americans was strictly prohibited.
The dramatic increase in repression after 1830 had its desired effect, thereafter. “On plantations of hundreds of slaves it was common to discover that not one of them had the mere rudiments of education. In some large districts it was considered almost a phenomenon to find a Negro who could read the Bible or sign his name.” In Georgia, a study concluded that “outside of Savannah, Augusta and Columbus there were, it is said, not a dozen colored people able to read and write, and in the country places, perhaps not one.” [17]
A Virginia politician in 1832 said publicly: "'We have as far as possible closed every avenue by which light may enter their [the slaves'] minds. If we could extinguish the capacity to see the light, our work would be completed; they would then be on a level with the beasts of the field and we should be safe!'"[18]
The situation was not much better in the North. African Americans were frequently barred from public schools. Schools like the African Free School were few and far between.[19]
Education and subversion in the Antebellum (Pre-Civil War) Era
Enslaved people taught each other how to read and write.
As early as the 1710s slaves were receiving Biblical literacy from their masters. Enslaved writer Phillis Wheatley was taught in the home of her master. She ended up using her skills to write poetry and address leaders of government on her feelings about slavery (although she died in abject poverty and obscurity). Not everyone was lucky enough to have the opportunities Wheatley had. Many slaves did learn to read through Christian instruction, but only those whose owners allowed them to attend. Some slave owners would only encourage literacy for slaves because they needed someone to run errands for them and other small reasons. They did not encourage slaves to learn to write. Slave owners saw writing as something that only educated white men should know.[20] African-American preachers would often attempt to teach some of the slaves to read in secret, but there were very few opportunities for concentrated periods of instruction. Through spirituals, stories, and other forms of oral literacy, preachers, abolitionists, and other community leaders imparted valuable political, cultural, and religious information.
Evidence suggests that enslaved people practiced reading and writing in secret. Slates with carved writings were discovered near George Washington's estate at Mount Vernon,[21] indicating that enslaved individuals engaged in literacy activities despite the prohibitions against it.[22]
Bly noted that "237 unidentified slates, 27 pencil leads, 2 pencil slates, and 18 writing slates were uncovered in houses once occupied by Jefferson's black bond servants." This shows that slaves were secretly practicing their reading and writing skills when they had time alone, most likely at night. They[who?] also believe slaves practiced their letters in the dirt because it was much easier to hide than writing on slates. Slaves then passed on their newly learned skills to others.[23]
Even though mistresses were more likely than masters to ignore the law and teach slaves to read, children were by far the most likely to flout what they saw as unfair and unnecessary restrictions. While peer tutelage was limited in scope, it was common for slave children to carry the white children's books to school. Once there, they would sit outside and try to follow the lessons through the open windows.[citation needed]
The regular practice of hiring out slaves also helped spread literacy. As seen in Frederick Douglass's own narrative, it was common for the literate to share their learning.[24] As a result of the constant flux, few if any plantations would fail to have at least a few literate slaves.
Douglass states in his biography that he understood the pathway from slavery to freedom and it was to have the power to read and write.
Over 100 years later, writer Mark Twain whose real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens would echo a similar sentiment when he said: "The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them."[25] In contrast, Schiller wrote: "After all, most educated slaves did not find that the acquisition of literacy led inexorably and inevitably to physical freedom and the idea that they needed an education to achieve and experience existential freedoms is surely problematic."[26]
Isaac and Rosa, formerly enslaved students at the Louisiana Free School
In the 1780s a group called the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery (PAS) took on anti-slavery tasks. They helped former slaves with educational and economic aid. They also helped with legal obligations, like making sure they did not get sold back into slavery. Another anti-slavery group, called the New York Manumission Society (NYMS), did many things towards the abolition of slavery; one important thing they did was establish a school for free blacks, who were usually barred from white children's schools throughout the U.S. “The NYMS established the African Free School in 1787 that, during its first two decades of existence, enrolled between 100 and 200 students annually, registering a total of eight hundred pupils by 1822.”[citation needed] The PAS also instituted a few schools for free blacks and ran them with freed slaves.
They were taught reading, writing, grammar, math, and geography. The schools would have an annual examination day to show the public, parents, and donors the knowledge the students had gained. It mainly was to show the white population that African Americans could function in society. There are some surviving records of what they learned in the free schools. Some of the work showed that they were preparing the students for a middle-class standing in society. Founded in 1787, the African Free School provided education for blacks in New York City for more than six decades.[27]
In 1863, an image of two emancipated slave children, Isaac and Rosa, who were studying at the Free School of Louisiana, was widely circulated in abolitionist campaigns.[28]
In examining the educational practices of the period, it is difficult to ascertain absolute figures or numbers. W. E. B. Du Bois and other contemporaries estimated that by 1865 as many as 9% of slaves attained at least a marginal degree of literacy. Genovese comments: "this is entirely plausible and may even be too low".[29] Especially in cities and sizable towns, many free blacks and literate slaves had greater opportunities to teach others, and both white and black activists operated illegal schools in cities such as Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Charleston, Richmond, and Atlanta.
Margaret Crittendon Douglass, a white woman who published a memoir after she was imprisoned in Virginia in 1853 for teaching free black children to read.[31]
Catherine and Jane Deveaux, a black mother and daughter who, with the Catholic nun Mathilda Beasley, ran underground schools in Savannah, Georgia in the early- to mid-1800s.[32]
The slave narrative is a type of literary genre involving the (written) autobiographical accounts of enslaved persons, particularly Africans enslaved in the Americas, though many other examples exist. Over six thousand such narratives are estimated to exist; about 150 narratives were published as separate books or pamphlets. In the United States during the Great Depression (1930s), more than 2,300 additional oral histories on life during slavery were collected by writers sponsored and published by the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal program. Most of the 26 audio-recorded interviews are held by the Library of Congress.
The Underground Railroad was used by freedom seekers from slavery in the United States and was generally an organized network of secret routes and safe houses. Enslaved Africans and African Americans escaped from slavery as early as the 16th century and many of their escapes were unaided, but the network of safe houses operated by agents generally known as the Underground Railroad began to organize in the 1780s among Abolitionist Societies in the North. It ran north and grew steadily until the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln. The escapees sought primarily to escape into free states, and from there to Canada.
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery and liberate slaves around the world.
The legal institution of human chattel slavery, comprising the enslavement primarily of Africans and African Americans, was prevalent in the United States of America from its founding in 1776 until 1865, predominantly in the South. Slavery was established throughout European colonization in the Americas. From 1526, during the early colonial period, it was practiced in what became Britain's colonies, including the Thirteen Colonies that formed the United States. Under the law, an enslaved person was treated as property that could be bought, sold, or given away. Slavery lasted in about half of U.S. states until abolition in 1865, and issues concerning slavery seeped into every aspect of national politics, economics, and social custom. In the decades after the end of Reconstruction in 1877, many of slavery's economic and social functions were continued through segregation, sharecropping, and convict leasing.
David Walker was an American abolitionist, writer, and anti-slavery activist. Though his father was enslaved, his mother was free; therefore, he was free as well. In 1829, while living in Boston, Massachusetts, with the assistance of the African Grand Lodge, he published An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, a call for black unity and a fight against slavery.
The American Anti-Slavery Society was an abolitionist society founded by William Lloyd Garrison and Arthur Tappan. Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave, had become a prominent abolitionist and was a key leader of this society, who often spoke at its meetings. William Wells Brown, also a freedman, also often spoke at meetings. By 1838, the society had 1,350 local chapters with around 250,000 members.
Harriet Jacobs was an African-American abolitionist and writer whose autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, published in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent, is now considered an "American classic".
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave is an 1845 memoir and treatise on abolition written by African-American orator and former slave Frederick Douglass during his time in Lynn, Massachusetts. It is the first of Douglass's three autobiographies, the others being My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass.
In the British colonies in North America and in the United States before the abolition of slavery in 1865, free Negro or free Black described the legal status of African Americans who were not enslaved. The term was applied both to formerly enslaved people (freedmen) and to those who had been born free, whether of African or mixed descent.
William Wells Brown was an American abolitionist, novelist, playwright, and historian. Born into slavery near Mount Sterling, Kentucky, Brown escaped to Ohio in 1834 at the age of 19. He settled in Boston, Massachusetts, where he worked for abolitionist causes and became a prolific writer. While working for abolition, Brown also supported causes including: temperance, women's suffrage, pacifism, prison reform, and an anti-tobacco movement. His novel Clotel (1853), considered the first novel written by an African American, was published in London, England, where he resided at the time. It was later published in the United States.
David Ruggles was an African-American abolitionist in New York who resisted slavery by his participation in a Committee of Vigilance, which worked on the Underground Railroad to help fugitive slaves reach free states. He was a printer in New York City during the 1830s, who also wrote numerous articles, and "was the prototype for black activist journalists of his time." He claimed to have led more than 600 fugitive slaves to freedom in the North, including Frederick Douglass, who became a friend and fellow activist. Ruggles opened the first African-American bookstore in 1834.
The trafficking of enslaved Africans to what became New York began as part of the Dutch slave trade. The Dutch West India Company trafficked eleven enslaved Africans to New Amsterdam in 1626, with the first slave auction held in New Amsterdam in 1655. With the second-highest proportion of any city in the colonies, more than 42% of New York City households enslaved African people by 1703, often as domestic servants and laborers. Others worked as artisans or in shipping and various trades in the city. Enslaved Africans were also used in farming on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley, as well as the Mohawk Valley region.
Life and Times of Frederick Douglass is Frederick Douglass's third autobiography, published in 1881, revised in 1892. Because of the emancipation of American slaves during and following the American Civil War, Douglass gave more details about his life as a slave and his escape from slavery in this volume than he could in his two previous autobiographies. It is the only one of Douglass's autobiographies to discuss his life during and after the Civil War, including his encounters with American presidents such as Lincoln and Garfield, his account of the ill-fated "Freedman's Bank", and his service as the United States Marshall of the District of Columbia. Frederick Douglass shed light on what life was like as an enslaved person. Although it is the least studied and analyzed, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass allows readers to view his life as a whole.
Anti-literacy laws in many slave states before and during the American Civil War affected slaves, freedmen, and in some cases all people of color. Some laws arose from concerns that literate slaves could forge the documents required to escape to a free state. According to William M. Banks, "Many slaves who learned to write did indeed achieve freedom by this method. The wanted posters for runaways often mentioned whether the escapee could write." Anti-literacy laws also arose from fears of slave insurrection, particularly around the time of abolitionist David Walker's 1829 publication of Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, which openly advocated rebellion, and Nat Turner's Rebellion of 1831.
The treatment of slaves in the United States often included sexual abuse and rape, the denial of education, and punishments like whippings. Families were often split up by the sale of one or more members, usually never to see or hear of each other again.
Sarah Mapps Douglass was an American educator, abolitionist, writer, and public lecturer. Her painted images on her written letters may be the first or earliest surviving examples of signed paintings by an African American woman. These paintings are contained within the Cassey Dickerson Album, a rare collection of 19th-century friendship letters between a group of women.
In the United States, abolitionism, the movement that sought to end slavery in the country, was active from the colonial era until the American Civil War, the end of which brought about the abolition of American slavery, except as punishment for a crime, through the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Margaret Crittendon Douglass was a Southern white woman who served one month in jail in 1854 for teaching free black children to read in Norfolk, Virginia. Refusing to hire a defense attorney, she defended herself in court and later published a book about her experiences. The case drew public attention to the highly restrictive laws against black literacy in the pre-Civil War American South.
Abolitionism in New Bedford, Massachusetts, began with the opposition to slavery voiced by Quakers during the late 1820s, followed by African Americans forming the antislavery group New Bedford Union Society in 1833, and an integrated group of abolitionists forming the New Bedford Anti-Slavery Society a year later. During the era New Bedford, Massachusetts, gained a reputation as a safe haven for fugitive slaves seeking freedom. Located on the East Coast of the United States, the town was becoming the "whaling capital of the world", where ships frequently returned to port, operated by crews of diverse backgrounds, languages, and ethnicity. This made it easy for fugitive slaves to "mix in" with crew members. The whaling and shipping industries were also uniquely open to people of color.
Abolitionist children’s literature includes works written for children by authors committed to the movement to end slavery. It aimed to instill in young readers an understanding of slavery, racial hierarchies, sympathy for the enslaved, and a desire for emancipation. A variety of literary forms were used by abolitionist children’s authors including, short stories, poems, songs, nursery rhymes and dialogues, much of it written by white women. Pamphlets, picture books and periodicals were the primary forms of abolitionist children’s literature, often using Biblical themes to reinforce the wickedness of slavery. Abolitionist children's literature was countered with pro-slavery material aimed at children, which attempting to depict slavery as a noble pursuit, and slaves as stupid and grateful, or evil.
1 2 Cunningham, Jerry (2023). The Alphabet As Resistance: Laws Against Reading, Writing and Religion in the Slave South. Portland, Oregon: Independently Published. p.117. ISBN9798390042335.
↑ Bly, Antonio T (Fall 2008). "Pretends He Can Read: Runaways and Literacy in Colonial America, 1730-1776". Early American Studies. 6 (2): 261–294. doi:10.1353/eam.0.0004. S2CID144994154.
↑ Schiller, Ben (Spring 2008). "Learning Their Letters: Critical Literacy, Epistolary Culture, and Slavery in the Antebellum South". Southern Quarterly. 45 (3): 11–29.
↑ Polgar, Paul J (Summer 2011). "To Raise Them to an Equal Participation". Journal of the Early Republic. 31 (2): 229–258. doi:10.1353/jer.2011.0023. S2CID143971087.
Albanese, Anthony. (1976.) The Plantation School. New York: Vantage Books.
William L. Andrews, ed. (1996). The Oxford Frederick Douglass News. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bly, Antonio T. "Pretends he can read": Runaways and Literacy in Colonial America, 1730–1776." Early American Studies 6, no. 2 (Fall 2008): 261–294. America: History & Life, EBSCOhost (accessed October 27, 2014).
Genovese, Eugene. (1976). Roll, Jordan, Roll. New York: Vintage Books.
Schiller, Ben (2008). "Learning Their Letters: Critical Literacy, Epistolary Culture, and Slavery in the Antebellum South". Southern Quarterly. 45 (3): 11–29.
Webber, Thomas. (1978). Deep Like Rivers: Education in the Slave Quarter Community 1831–1865. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Woodson, C.G. (1915). The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861: A History of the Education of the Colored People of the United States from the Beginning of Slavery to the Civil War. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.
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