When Was It Illegal for Blacks to Read

Literacy and Religious Instruction

From the earliest days of the Virginia colony, there was a strong connection between the literacy of slaves and religion. Many slaveholders and clergymen believed it was their duty to convert enslaved African Americans to Christianity and sometimes used the promise of such conversions as a justification for slavery. Religious pedagogy, however, oftentimes involved catechism, thus requiring some degree of literacy among potential converts. This was complicated past common-law norms that equated Christian baptism and liberty. In 1656, for instance, a Virginia court awarded freedom to the enslaved woman Elizabeth Key—the daughter of an enslaved woman and a costless white father—after she proved that she had been baptized. Slaveholders who considered teaching their slaves to read the Bible may accept been discouraged from doing so by such a ruling. Two laws changed that, however. In 1662, the Full general Assembly connected a person's enslavement or freedom to "the condition of the female parent," and in 1667 the assembly removed baptism as an avenue to freedom. According to lawmakers, "masters" were now free to "more carefully endeavour the propagation of christianity."

Past 1680 their efforts might have produced an unanticipated consequence in that some slaves, in addition to learning how to read, had also taught themselves how to write. That may explain why that year, the Business firm of Burgesses declared information technology unlawful "for any negro … to goe or depart from his master's ground without a certificate from his master, mistress or overseer." That is to say, in the absenteeism of proper written consent, slaves could be taken upwardly as runaways and could receive "20 lashes on the blank back well layd on, and soe sent home to his said main, mistris or overseer."

In 1660, Virginia's population of 27,020 included only 950 blacks, enslaved or free, and according to Morgan Godwyn, few of them received religious teaching in spite of changes to the police. Godwyn was an Anglican minister who served outset in Virginia and then in Barbados betwixt 1665 and 1680. Upon his return to England, he published the pamphlet Negro's and Indians Advocate , which observed that many African Americans were "rather addicted and desirous of being made Christians." He argued that, in spite of their masters' apprehensions, greater zeal should be taken in the didactics of slaves. "Being myself fully persuaded," he wrote, "God will assuredly make good his Promise to the Earth, 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 Infidel in those Plantations."

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

Letter to Bishop Edmund Gibson

In 1723, an bearding letter was written to the new bishop of London, Edmund Gibson, by one or more than slaves in Virginia. The letter is dated August 4 at the beginning and September eight at the end, and employs both the first-person atypical and offset-person plural. "Wee darer nott Subscribe any mans proper name to this," the alphabetic character reads, "for feare of our masters for if they knew that wee have Sent domicile to your honour wee Should goo neare to Swing upon the gallas tree." How the document was transported to London is unknown. The alphabetic character pleads with the bishop to "Releese us out of this Cruell Bondegg" and also requests that slaves in Virginia be educated. In particular, the writers asking that "our childarn may be broatt up in the mode of the Christian faith." They not only ask to be taught to recite the Lord's Prayer, the creed, and the Ten Commandments merely likewise that their children be sent "to Scool and Larnd to Reed through the Bybell."

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

At the time Virginia had 50-4 parishes; responses from xx-8 have survived. They suggest that merely a modest number of slaves received an education; that most who did were born in America; that their instruction was connected to religious conversion; and that reading was an essential part of that education. Indeed, extant birth and baptism records suggest that slaves mastered reading earlier receiving the rite of baptism.

"We've no infidels, that are gratuitous," reported Henry Collins, the rector of Saint Peter'south Parish, in New Kent Canton, "but a great many Negro-bondslaves; some of which are suffered by the respective Masters to exist baptized … only others are not." The parson'south observation matches the historical record. During the 1720s, merely 15 percent of the 283 slaves whose births had been recorded by Saint Peter's were later baptized. George Robertson, the rector of Bristol Parish in James Urban center Canton, expressed similar sentiments. "Some masters instruct Slaves at dwelling house or bring them to baptism," he wrote, "simply non many." In his parish, no more than than vii per centum of enslaved infants were baptized during the 1720s.

Other clerics reported some success in providing religious educational activity. William Blackness, the rector of Accomako Parish, on the Eastern Shore, wrote that since his arrival in 1709 he had baptized almost 200 slaves. William LeNeve, the rector of James Metropolis Parish, told the bishop that he had "examined and improved several Negroes natives of Virginia" and that he hoped to "plant that seed among them, w[hello]ch will produce a blest Harvest." Francis Fontaine, the rector of York-Hampton Parish, was more precise, reporting, "I know of no Infidels in my Parish except Slaves. I exhort their Master to send them to me to exist instructed. And in Order to their Conversion I take fix a part every Saturday in the afternoon and Catechize them at my Glebe business firm." John Cargill, the rector of Southwark Parish, in Surry County, mentioned a school for Indians in his parish. "As to ye Negro slaves at that place," he wrote, "some of their Masters on whom I exercise prevail to have ye baptized: I taught, but non many."

In a public answer to the messages he had received, Gibson encouraged "the Schoolmasters in several Parishes, parts of whose Business information technology is to instruct Youth in the Principles of Christianity … [bear] on this Work … on the Lord's 24-hour interval, when both they and the Negroes are most at Liberty."

Slave Advertisements

In addition to church records, runaway slave advertisements provide bear witness that some slaves learned to read and write. Betwixt 1736 and 1776, approximately 1,000 fugitive-slave notices appeared in the Virginia Gazette, published in Williamsburg. Of that number, 55 runaways, or more five percent, were described as literate. In the starting time three years of the paper's publication, 44 slaves were reported as having stolen themselves away. None, however, was reported as literate. Merely in the post-obit decade, 1 of 33 was identified as educated. By the 1750s that number grew. Effectually the same time the colony's slave population nearly doubled, 3 of 72 runaways were noted every bit being literate. In the 1760s, 16 out of 233 runaways, or half dozen.eight percent, had learned to read and write. By the time the colony declared independence, 35 of 648 runaways, or v.four percent, had achieved literacy.

Among that number was Isaac Bee, who fled from the Mecklenburg County estate of Lewis Burwell in July 1774. A fellow member of the Firm of Burgesses, Burwell placed an advertising in the September 8 event of the Virginia Gazette calling for the return of "a likely Mulatto Lad named ISAAC BEE." He described Bee equally xviii to nineteen years sometime and the son of a "Freeman" and therefore someone who "thinks he has a Right to his Freedom." Burwell worried that Bee would laissez passer equally a freeman and noted that "he tin can read, just I practice not know that he can write; yet, he may easily get some One to forge a Pass for him."

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

Bray Schools in Virginia

Isaac Bee and a relative handful of other slaves in Virginia were educated in Bray schools. The Associates of Dr. Bray was a philanthropic group founded in 1724 past the Anglican chaplain Thomas Bray, who had already established the Society for Promoting Christian Noesis in 1699 and the Guild for the Propagation of the Gospel in Strange Parts (SPG) in 1701. In keeping with the prophet Isaiah'due south injunction to "seek ye out the book of the Lord, and read," the Associates established schools in Pennsylvania, New York, Rhode Island, and Virginia that provided enslaved people Christian didactics through biblical literacy. As in Bray's other groups, reading represented a fundamental aspect of the Associates' mission and was seen as an musical instrument of reform.

The school in Williamsburg operated at various locations from 1760 to 1774. It employed a unmarried teacher and was overseen by a number of people, including successive presidents of the Higher of William and Mary. A similar 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 by 1776.

Bee, then endemic by John Blair, a fellow member of the governor'south Council, was enrolled at the Williamsburg school in December 1764. The extant roster indicates that he began attending the school at age seven. Under the guidance of the teacher Anne Wager, he and his sister Clara learned the Apostle'south Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the catechism. Initially their lessons involved recitation and memorization. Every bit 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 pedagogy, especially to those who had been born in the colony.

Equally many every bit 400 mostly urban slaves and a few free blacks in and around Williamsburg were educated at the Bray school. They attended in classes of between 20 and xxx, with their numbers fairly evenly divided between boys and girls. Perchance as few every bit 40 or l students attended the Fredericksburg schoolhouse. Every bit a letter from a Virginia chaplain to the Associates revealed, African-born slaves were not considered to be practiced candidates for biblical literacy because they were thought to exist too 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 as schoolmasters. Adam Dickie, the minister of Drysdale Parish in King and Queen County, 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 respond for themselves and repeat the Catechism very distinctly." 2 years afterwards, he circulated SPG books to those slaves "he thought most diligent and desirous to read." Jonathan Boucher, a minister in Hanover Parish, Rex George County, also employed slaves as teachers. I "employed the services of a literate Negro slave," he explained, "who lived nearby to teach his boyfriend brethren how to read." When he relocated to Caroline County in 1764, Boucher connected the practise. "The Method I accept," he wrote in a letter to the Associates, "I hope They volition think is not misapplying it, I generally discover out an quondam Negro … able to read, to whom I give Books, with an Injunction to Them to instruct such & such Slaves in their respective Neighbourhoods."

Fear of Slave Literacy

While many white Virginians believed that literacy was necessary for the religious conversion of slaves, they likewise feared the consequences of such an instruction. For one, a slave's ability to read and write contradicted one of the ideological foundations of slavery—the idea that Africans and African Americans were intellectually and morally junior and, therefore, in need 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 insubordinate.

Those concerns were not unfounded. During the leap and summer of 1800 dozens of enslaved men in and around Richmond concocted a plan to impale their masters and other white people, seize Governor James Monroe, and burn down Richmond. Gabriel's Conspiracy, every bit the plot came to be known, was betrayed at the concluding moment and its participants seized. Twenty-six slaves were hanged and eight more 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 social club to travel from plantation to plantation, kept lists of the names of conspirators, and planned to sew a flag begetting the words "decease or liberty."

Literacy immune enslaved men and women a express ability to motion nigh 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 admission to notions of liberty and freedom. As a literate blacksmith regularly hired out by his principal, Gabriel may have represented a threat to many white Virginians, and in the aftermath of the conspiracy that bore his proper noun, the General Assembly passed new restrictions that attempted to make such an issue less likely in the futurity. Most, yet, focused on the role of free blacks in the conspiracy and did not address the instruction of slaves. In January 1804, the assembly prohibited all slaves from gathering together at night—at churches, meetinghouses, or anywhere else—under whatever pretext. Although the law did not explicitly connect such gatherings with slaves learning to read or write, it was implied in part because much of that learning took place in churches at night.

The education of slaves, meanwhile, was non expressly prohibited. In 1805, the Full general Assembly updated its earlier law prohibiting the gathering of slaves to analyze that it was not intended to forestall masters from taking their slaves to church. In 1819, the associates further clarified the law. In addition to being prohibited from gathering at meetinghouses, slaves were now banned from "whatsoever school or schools for education them reading or writing, either in the day or night." It continued to exist 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, yet, resisted the impulse to educate. Still, many of their slaves worked difficult and often took bang-up risks to educate themselves.

"I think that I had an intense longing to learn to read," Booker T. Washington recalled in his autobiography, Upwards from Slavery, published in 1901. Washington was born enslaved virtually 1856 in Franklin County. "I adamant, when quite a small child, that, if I accomplished nothing else in life, I would in some manner get enough education to enable me to read." To that end, he "induced" his "female parent to go hold of a book" for him. "How or where she got it I do not know, merely in some way she procured an old copy of Webster's 'blue-back' spelling-book, which contained the alphabet, followed past such meaningless words as 'ab,' 'ba,' 'ca,' 'da.' I began at once to devour this book."

In his memoir 20-Eight Years a Slave (1909), Thomas L. Johnson recalled that his mother had been his start teacher. "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 first taught me the Lord'southward Prayer." James Due west. Sumler, who escaped from Norfolk to Canada in 1855, told an interviewer that he also learned to read: "I hid in a hayloft on Dominicus, and got the younger white children to teach me. I bought the book with a ninepence that a human being gave me for holding his horse."

Extant narratives and letters too demonstrate that enslaved Virginians used their ability to read and write for many ends. Born a slave in 1838 in Fredericksburg, John One thousand. 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 not recounting parties and gossip inside and outside church, Washington wrote Annie Gordon, a free black daughter several years his junior dearest letters and flirtatious notes. A Virginia slave woman named Maria Perkins wrote her husband Richard, lamenting the sale of their children.

Sundays proved to be maybe the nearly advantageous days for learning. They afforded enslaved Virginians such as Washington, Perkins, Sumler, and others some time off for religious observance and a gamble to steal abroad to read and write. Nigh masters preached from the New Testament, but slave songs document a preference for the Old Testament. Instead of messages of subservience and obedience, slaves throughout Virginia favored reading and singing virtually deliverance and faith.

Nat Turner

A particularly potent fusion of literacy and prophetic religion found a home in the enslaved preacher Nat Turner, of Southampton County. Born in 1800, the year of Gabriel's Conspiracy, Turner came of age in a deeply religious slave customs. He regularly attended church with his grandmother. By almost supernatural circumstances, he had learned to read and write. "The fashion in which I learned to read and write," he explained from his cell, "I acquired information technology with the most perfect ease, and so much so, that I have no recollection whatever 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 proceed me from crying, I began spelling the names of different objects."

Nonetheless he learned, Turner's education improved every bit he grew older. At historic period twenty-two, he underwent a series of spiritual visions through which, he believed, God spoke to him. Transfixed past images of claret-stained corn, hieroglyphic characters, and numbers he discovered in the woods, in improver to black and white apparitions fighting in the sky and his own reading of John the Apostle, Turner became convinced that "the great day of judgment was at hand" and that he was commissioned to destroy the wicked institution of slavery. On that day, in his mind, "the start should exist terminal and the last should be start." Months before Turner led a group of slaves, free African Americans, and at least 1 white indentured servant in the bloodiest slave defection in U.S. history, the General Assembly expressed concerns about slave education.

Revising the 1819 law prohibiting slave educational activity, the assembly declared "that all meetings of costless negroes or mulattoes, at whatsoever school house, church, meeting-house or other place for teaching them reading or writing, either in the solar day or night, under whatsoever pretext, shall exist considered as an unlawful assembly." Furthermore, sympathetic whites defenseless teaching free negroes or mulattoes to read or write were fined fifty dollars, or twice that sum if they were defenseless instructing slaves. To discourage such meetings, they connected to threaten corporal penalisation. Merely these efforts were ultimately in vain; slaves continued to learn to read and write.

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

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 delinquent ads to archaeological finds suggest that as many every bit v 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 accept doubled to 10 percent during the antebellum era. This desire for an teaching continued slaves to Christian religion and the outside world, and it followed them to liberty. Equally 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 percent between the end of the state of war and the 1880s, and to 70 percent by 1910.

And ever there was an clamorous desire to learn. Booker T. Washington recalled an elderly adult female who "hobbled into the room where I was, leaning on a cane. She was clad in rags; but they were make 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 amend men an' better women for de coloured race. I own't got no money, but I wants you to take dese vi eggs, what I's been savin' up, an' I wants you to put dese vi 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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