When Did It Become Legal for Black to Read and Write

Literacy and Religious Instruction

From the primeval days of the Virginia colony, there was a potent connection betwixt the literacy of slaves and faith. Many slaveholders and clergymen believed information technology was their duty to convert enslaved African Americans to Christianity and sometimes used the promise of such conversions as a justification for slavery. Religious teaching, withal, oft involved catechism, thus requiring some caste of literacy among potential converts. This was complicated by common-constabulary norms that equated Christian baptism and freedom. In 1656, for instance, a Virginia court awarded freedom to the enslaved woman Elizabeth Cardinal—the daughter of an enslaved woman and a gratuitous white father—after she proved that she had been baptized. Slaveholders who considered teaching their slaves to read the Bible may have been discouraged from doing and then by such a ruling. Two laws changed that, however. In 1662, the General Associates connected a person's enslavement or freedom to "the condition of the mother," and in 1667 the assembly removed baptism as an avenue to freedom. According to lawmakers, "masters" were now costless to "more carefully endeavour the propagation of christianity."

By 1680 their efforts might have produced an unanticipated consequence in that some slaves, in addition to learning how to read, had besides taught themselves how to write. That may explain why that year, the House of Burgesses declared it unlawful "for any negro … to goe or depart from his primary'southward ground without a document from his chief, mistress or overseer." That is to say, in the absence of proper written consent, slaves could be taken up as runaways and could receive "twenty lashes on the blank back well layd on, and soe sent home to his said principal, mistris or overseer."

In 1660, Virginia's population of 27,020 included just 950 blacks, enslaved or free, and according to Morgan Godwyn, few of them received religious instruction in spite of changes to the law. Godwyn was an Anglican minister who served beginning in Virginia and then in Barbados between 1665 and 1680. Upon his return to England, he published the pamphlet Negro'southward and Indians Advocate , which observed that many African Americans were "rather fond and desirous of being made Christians." He argued that, in spite of their masters' apprehensions, greater zeal should exist taken in the instruction of slaves. "Being myself fully persuaded," he wrote, "God volition assuredly make good his Hope to the World, of causing his Gospel to exist published … I do here tender to the Public this Plea both for the Christianizing of our Negro's and other Heathen in those Plantations."

By "Christianizing," Godwyn meant teaching slaves to read. Equally early as the 1660s, reading had become a fundamental part of catechizing new parishioners in England. "As soon every bit memorizing was going well," the historian Ian Dark-green has explained, "the focus was shifted to comprehension." Increasingly, "nosotros find catechetical authors either associating literacy with learning a catechism or assuming that those using a class would already exist literate." And with that "thorow knowledge of [Christian] Principles," Godwyn declared, slaves could also realize their principal purpose in life, "namely to glorifie and serve God."

Letter of the alphabet to Bishop Edmund Gibson

In 1723, an bearding alphabetic character was written to the new bishop of London, Edmund Gibson, by 1 or more slaves in Virginia. The letter is dated August 4 at the start and September 8 at the stop, and employs both the first-person singular and commencement-person plural. "Wee darer nott Subscribe any mans proper noun to this," the alphabetic character reads, "for feare of our masters for if they knew that wee accept Sent home to your honour wee Should goo neare to Swing upon the gallas tree." How the document was transported to London is unknown. The letter pleads with the bishop to "Releese united states out of this Cruell Bondegg" and also requests that slaves in Virginia be educated. In item, the writers request that "our childarn may be broatt up in the mode of the Christian faith." They not just ask to be taught to recite the Lord'south Prayer, the creed, and the Ten Commandments but also that their children be sent "to Scool and Larnd to Reed through the Bybell."

Gibson was a fellow member of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, founded by the Reverend Dr. Thomas Bray in 1701 and charged with ministering abroad, especially to slaves and Native Americans. Not long afterwards taking office, the bishop distributed a seventeen-question "Newspaper of Enquiries" to the Anglican clergy in North America. He asked about the size of congregations, how services were conducted, and—maybe influenced by the Virginia letter, which he had just received—whether "there are any Infidels, bond or free, inside your Parish; and what ways are used for their conversion?"

At the time Virginia had fifty-4 parishes; responses from twenty-eight take survived. They suggest that only a minor number of slaves received an pedagogy; that most who did were born in America; that their didactics was connected to religious conversion; and that reading was an essential role of that educational activity. Indeed, extant nascency and baptism records propose that slaves mastered reading before receiving the rite of baptism.

"Nosotros've no infidels, that are costless," reported Henry Collins, the rector of Saint Peter'south Parish, in New Kent County, "just a not bad many Negro-bondslaves; some of which are suffered by the respective Masters to be baptized … but others are not." The parson's observation matches the historical tape. During the 1720s, merely xv percent of the 283 slaves whose births had been recorded by Saint Peter's were subsequently baptized. George Robertson, the rector of Bristol Parish in James City County, expressed similar sentiments. "Some masters instruct Slaves at home or bring them to baptism," he wrote, "but not many." In his parish, no more than seven pct of enslaved infants were baptized during the 1720s.

Other clerics reported some success in providing religious education. William Blackness, the rector of Accomako Parish, on the Eastern Shore, wrote that since his arrival in 1709 he had baptized virtually 200 slaves. William LeNeve, the rector of James City Parish, told the bishop that he had "examined and improved several Negroes natives of Virginia" and that he hoped to "constitute that seed among them, w[hi]ch will produce a blest Harvest." Francis Fontaine, the rector of York-Hampton Parish, was more than precise, reporting, "I know of no Infidels in my Parish except Slaves. I exhort their Master to send them to me to be instructed. And in Lodge to their Conversion I have set a part every Saturday in the afternoon and Catechize them at my Glebe firm." John Cargill, the rector of Southwark Parish, in Surry Canton, mentioned a school for Indians in his parish. "As to ye Negro slaves there," he wrote, "some of their Masters on whom I exercise prevail to have ye baptized: I taught, simply not many."

In a public reply to the letters he had received, Gibson encouraged "the Schoolmasters in several Parishes, parts of whose Concern it is to instruct Youth in the Principles of Christianity … [carry] on this Work … on the Lord's 24-hour interval, when both they and the Negroes are nearly at Liberty."

Slave Advertisements

In addition to church records, runaway slave advertisements provide show that some slaves learned to read and write. Between 1736 and 1776, approximately 1,000 fugitive-slave notices appeared in the Virginia Gazette, published in Williamsburg. Of that number, 55 runaways, or more than 5 percent, were described every bit literate. In the showtime iii years of the paper'due south publication, 44 slaves were reported as having stolen themselves away. None, however, was reported as literate. But in the following decade, ane of 33 was identified as educated. Past the 1750s that number grew. Effectually the same fourth dimension the colony'south slave population about doubled, iii of 72 runaways were noted as being literate. In the 1760s, 16 out of 233 runaways, or 6.8 percent, had learned to read and write. By the time the colony declared independence, 35 of 648 runaways, or 5.4 percentage, had achieved literacy.

Among that number was Isaac Bee, who fled from the Mecklenburg County estate of Lewis Burwell in July 1774. A member of the House of Burgesses, Burwell placed an advertisement in the September 8 consequence of the Virginia Gazette calling for the return of "a likely Mulatto Lad named ISAAC BEE." He described Bee every bit xviii to 19 years old and the son of a "Freeman" and therefore someone who "thinks he has a Right to his Freedom." Burwell worried that Bee would pass as a freeman and noted that "he tin read, but I practise not know that he can write; however, he may hands become some Ane to forge a Pass for him."

Although the percent of fugitives who both appeared in advertisements and were literate was small, the percentage of literate fugitives who could both read and write was high: 62 percentage. Thus, while Burwell was not certain as to whether Bee had learned to write, he had good reason to believe that other enslaved people had learned and would help create a laissez passer allowing him to travel freely.

Bray Schools in Virginia

Isaac Bee and a relative scattering of other slaves in Virginia were educated in Bray schools. The Associates of Dr. Bray was a philanthropic group founded in 1724 by the Anglican clergyman Thomas Bray, who had already established the Society for Promoting Christian Cognition in 1699 and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG) in 1701. In keeping with the prophet Isaiah'southward injunction to "seek ye out the volume of the Lord, and read," the Assembly established schools in Pennsylvania, New York, Rhode Island, and Virginia that provided enslaved people Christian instruction through biblical literacy. Every bit in Bray's other groups, reading represented a key aspect of the Associates' mission and was seen as an instrument of reform.

The school in Williamsburg operated at diverse locations from 1760 to 1774. It employed a unmarried teacher and was overseen by a number of people, including successive presidents of the College of William and Mary. A like school opened in Fredericksburg in 1765 and was run by the merchant Fielding Lewis. It closed during the winter of 1769–1770 due to depression enrollment and hostility from local slaveholders. All the Bray schools in America had closed past 1776.

Bee, then owned by John Blair, a member of the governor'due south Council, was enrolled at the Williamsburg school in December 1764. The extant roster indicates that he began attending the schoolhouse at age vii. Under the guidance of the teacher Anne Wager, he and his sis Clara learned the Apostle's Creed, the Lord'due south Prayer, and the catechism. Initially their lessons involved recitation and memorization. As they progressed, they learned "the true Spelling of Words" and how to pronounce "& read distinctly." The Assembly believed that slaveholders had a Christian obligation to provide reading instruction, peculiarly to those who had been born in the colony.

As many as 400 more often than not urban slaves and a few free blacks in and effectually Williamsburg were educated at the Bray schoolhouse. They attended in classes of between 20 and 30, with their numbers fairly evenly divided between boys and girls. Perhaps equally few equally 40 or 50 students attended the Fredericksburg school. As a letter from a Virginia clergyman to the Assembly revealed, African-built-in slaves were not considered to be good candidates for biblical literacy because they were thought to be likewise unfamiliar with Western languages.

In addition to the Fredericksburg and Williamsburg schools, a number of unofficial Bray schools operated in the colony. About were run by churchwardens who usually likewise served as the schoolmasters. Two of these schools used slaves equally schoolmasters. Adam Dickie, the government minister of Drysdale Parish in King and Queen Canton, taught several slaves, some of whom he trusted to teach others. In 1732, the parson boasted that he had fourteen slaves in his congregation who "could answer for themselves and repeat the Catechism very distinctly." Two years later, he circulated SPG books to those slaves "he thought most diligent and desirous to read." Jonathan Boucher, a minister in Hanover Parish, Rex George Canton, besides employed slaves every bit teachers. I "employed the services of a literate Negro slave," he explained, "who lived nearby to teach his young man brethren how to read." When he relocated to Caroline County in 1764, Boucher continued the practice. "The Method I take," he wrote in a alphabetic character to the Associates, "I hope They volition think is non misapplying information technology, I generally find out an old Negro … able to read, to whom I give Books, with an Injunction to Them to instruct such & such Slaves in their respective Neighbourhoods."

Fright of Slave Literacy

While many white Virginians believed that literacy was necessary for the religious conversion of slaves, they also feared the consequences of such an didactics. For one, a slave'southward ability to read and write contradicted one of the ideological foundations of slavery—the idea that Africans and African Americans were intellectually and morally inferior and, therefore, in demand of guidance by white men. For another, the education of slaves risked exposing them to ideas of human equality that circulated during the American Revolution. Virginia slaveholders worried that their slaves, armed with such ideas, might rebel.

Those concerns were not unfounded. During the leap and summer of 1800 dozens of enslaved men in and effectually Richmond concocted a programme to kill their masters and other white people, seize Governor James Monroe, and burn Richmond. Gabriel's Conspiracy, as the plot came to be known, was betrayed at the last moment and its participants seized. 20-six slaves were hanged and viii more than sold out of state. Testimony at the trials suggests that a number of slaves, including Gabriel, George Smith, and Sam Byrd Jr., could read and write. They forged passes in order to travel from plantation to plantation, kept lists of the names of conspirators, and planned to sew a flag bearing the words "decease or liberty."

Literacy immune enslaved men and women a limited ability to motility about and provided them some access to written ideas. In addition, skilled slaves were often hired out, enhancing their exposure to a variety of people and perhaps giving them greater access to notions of freedom and freedom. As a literate blacksmith regularly hired out by his master, Gabriel may take represented a threat to many white Virginians, and in the backwash of the conspiracy that bore his name, the General Associates passed new restrictions that attempted to make such an event less likely in the future. Near, still, focused on the role of free blacks in the conspiracy and did non address the instruction of slaves. In January 1804, the assembly prohibited all slaves from gathering together at dark—at churches, meetinghouses, or anywhere else—under whatsoever pretext. Although the law did not explicitly connect such gatherings with slaves learning to read or write, it was implied in function because much of that learning took place in churches at night.

The didactics of slaves, meanwhile, was not expressly prohibited. In 1805, the General Assembly updated its earlier police prohibiting the gathering of slaves to clarify that it was not intended to forbid masters from taking their slaves to church. In 1819, the assembly further clarified the law. In addition to being prohibited from gathering at meetinghouses, slaves were at present banned from "any school or schools for teaching them reading or writing, either in the 24-hour interval or night." It continued to be legal for slaveholders to instruct their slaves outside of schools, churches, and meetinghouses, and some masters believed that literacy increased a slave's value. Most slaveholders, however, resisted the impulse to educate. Still, many of their slaves worked hard and often took great risks to educate themselves.

"I recall that I had an intense longing to larn to read," Booker T. Washington recalled in his autobiography, Upwardly from Slavery, published in 1901. Washington was born enslaved about 1856 in Franklin County. "I determined, when quite a minor child, that, if I accomplished nothing else in life, I would in some way get plenty education to enable me to read." To that end, he "induced" his "mother to get agree of a book" for him. "How or where she got information technology I do non know, but in some way she procured an one-time copy of Webster's 'blue-back' spelling-book, which contained the alphabet, followed by such meaningless words as 'ab,' 'ba,' 'ca,' 'da.' I began at in one case to devour this book."

In his memoir Twenty-Eight Years a Slave (1909), Thomas Fifty. Johnson recalled that his female parent had been his starting time instructor. "She taught me what she knew," he wrote. "The whole of her education consisted in a knowledge of the Alphabet, and how to count [to] a hundred. She outset taught me the Lord'southward Prayer." James West. Sumler, who escaped from Norfolk to Canada in 1855, told an interviewer that he likewise learned to read: "I hid in a hayloft on Lord's day, and got the younger white children to teach me. I bought the book with a ninepence that a man gave me for holding his horse."

Extant narratives and letters also demonstrate that enslaved Virginians used their ability to read and write for many ends. Born a slave in 1838 in Fredericksburg, John M. Washington learned to read from his mother Sarah Tucker. In his early teens, he taught himself to write. Like other Virginia slaves, he used literacy to communicate with his extended family. When non recounting parties and gossip inside and outside church building, Washington wrote Annie Gordon, a free blackness daughter several years his inferior dearest letters and flirtatious notes. A Virginia slave adult female named Maria Perkins wrote her husband Richard, lamenting the sale of their children.

Sundays proved to be perhaps the about advantageous days for learning. They afforded enslaved Virginians such as Washington, Perkins, Sumler, and others some time off for religious observance and a chance to steal abroad to read and write. Most masters preached from the New Testament, but slave songs certificate a preference for the Former Testament. Instead of messages of subservience and obedience, slaves throughout Virginia favored reading and singing well-nigh deliverance and faith.

Nat Turner

A peculiarly potent fusion of literacy and prophetic faith plant a habitation in the enslaved preacher Nat Turner, of Southampton Canton. Born in 1800, the twelvemonth of Gabriel'south Conspiracy, Turner came of age in a deeply religious slave community. He regularly attended church with his grandmother. By nigh supernatural circumstances, he had learned to read and write. "The manner in which I learned to read and write," he explained from his jail cell, "I acquired information technology with the most perfect ease, and then much and then, that I have no recollection any of learning the alphabet." To the astonishment of his family unit and the local community, he began, at a relatively young age to read. "One day," he noted, "when a volume was shewn me to continue me from crying, I began spelling the names of different objects."

However he learned, Turner'south education improved as he grew older. At age twenty-ii, he underwent a series of spiritual visions through which, he believed, God spoke to him. Transfixed by images of claret-stained corn, hieroglyphic characters, and numbers he discovered in the forest, in add-on to blackness and white apparitions fighting in the sky and his own reading of John the Campaigner, Turner became convinced that "the neat mean solar day of judgment was at hand" and that he was commissioned to destroy the wicked institution of slavery. On that solar day, in his mind, "the first should be last and the final should be start." Months earlier Turner led a grouping of slaves, free African Americans, and at to the lowest degree one white indentured servant in the bloodiest slave revolt in U.S. history, the General Assembly expressed concerns about slave instruction.

Revising the 1819 law prohibiting slave education, the assembly alleged "that all meetings of free negroes or mulattoes, at whatever school business firm, church, meeting-business firm or other identify for teaching them reading or writing, either in the day or night, under whatsoever pretext, shall be considered as an unlawful assembly." Furthermore, sympathetic whites defenseless teaching free negroes or mulattoes to read or write were fined 50 dollars, or twice that sum if they were caught instructing slaves. To discourage such meetings, they connected to threaten corporal punishment. Simply these efforts were ultimately in vain; slaves continued to learn to read and write.

In the aftermath of Turner'due south failed revolt, the General Assembly debated whether to end slavery in Virginia altogether, deciding somewhen to adopt legislation that more strictly regulated the behavior of the state's enslaved population. Seven months after Turner and his party had been captured and hanged, the associates outlawed slaves preaching at any time. Complimentary blacks, mulattoes, and slaves were also prohibited from attending unsupervised meetings "held for religious purposes, or other educational activity." White ministers were forbidden from preaching to gratuitous blacks, mulattoes, or slaves without permission. Moreover, punishments were likewise prescribed for whites, free blacks, mulattoes, and slaves who were caught with written or printed materials that encouraged insurrection.

Legacy

Despite the many social and legal obstacles, and indeed sometimes the physical risk, enslaved African Americans in Virginia learned to read and write. Sources ranging from runaway ads to archaeological finds propose that as many every bit 5 percent of slaves learned to read before the American Revolution. Historians looking at ads and accounts by enslaved and formerly enslaved people believe that may have doubled to x percent during the antebellum era. This want for an pedagogy connected slaves to Christian faith and the exterior world, and it followed them to freedom. As Union armies arrived in Virginia in 1861, African Americans immediately began opening schools. They utilized black teachers and, over the years, an increasing number of white Northerners. Literacy rates rose accordingly, to xxx pct between the cease of the war and the 1880s, and to seventy percentage by 1910.

And ever there was an insatiable desire to acquire. Booker T. Washington recalled an elderly woman who "hobbled into the room where I was, leaning on a cane. She was clad in rags; merely they were clean. She said: 'Mr. Washin'ton, God knows I spent de bes' days of my life in slavery. God knows I's ignorant an' poor… I knows you is tryin' to make better men an' ameliorate women for de coloured race. I ain't got no money, but I wants you to take dese six eggs, what I's been savin' up, an' I wants you to put dese half-dozen eggs into the eddication of dese boys an' gals."

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Source: https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/slave-literacy-and-education-in-virginia/

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