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Up From Slavery:
A Documentary
History of Negro
Education
Compiled By
Rudolph Lewis
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A North Carolina Newspaper
Comments on a School For "Girls of Color" in Baltimore, 1830
A school for the education of
girls of color has been established in Baltimore, under the
direction of a religious society of colored women, established
in June last, who devote themselves to religious duties, and to
the Christian education of their own color. Besides the care
bestowed upon their religious education, the pupils are taught
English, French, cyphering and writing, sewing in all its
branches, embroidery, washing and ironing. Boarding &
tuition, $48 per year.
Free Press, (Tarborough, NC.), Feb. 5, 1830.
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Louisiana Forbids Slaves to
be Taught to Read or Write, 1830
That all persons who shall
teach, or permit or cause to be taught, any slave in this State,
to read or write, shall, upon conviction thereof, before any
court of competent jurisdiction, be imprisoned, not more than
one month nor more than twelve months. (Law of March 16, 1830.)
A New Digest of the Statute
Laws of Louisiana, 1841, I, 271-72. After the Nat Turner
insurrection in Virginia in 1831 the slave-holding states
enacted legislation against the teaching of Negroes to read and
write. The statutes on the subject generally ran to a pattern
and were similar in most of the states.
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The General Assembly of Virginia Prohibits the Teaching of
Slaves,
Free Negroes, or Mulattoes to Read or Write, 1831
4. Be it further enacted, That all meetings of free negroes
or mulattoes, at any school-house, church, meeting-house or
other place for teaching them reading or writing, either in the
day or night, under whatsoever pretext, shall be deemed and
considered as an unlawful assembly; and any justice of the
county or corporation, wherein such assemblage shall be, either
from his own knowledge, or on the information of others, of such
unlawful assemblage or meeting, shall issue his warrant,
directed to any sworn officer or officers, authorizing him or
them, to enter the house or houses where such unlawful
assemblage or meeting may be, for the purpose of apprehending or
dispersing such free negroes or mulattoes, and to inflict
corporal punishment on the offender or offenders, at the
discretion of any justice of the peace, not exceeding twenty
lashes.
5. Be it further enacted, That if any white person or persons
assemble with free negroes or mulattoes, at any schoolhouse,
church, meeting-house, or other place for the purpose of
instructing such free negroes or mulattoes to read or write,
such person or persons shall, on conviction thereof, be fined in
a sum not exceeding fifty dollars, and moreover may be
imprisoned at the discretion of a jury, not exceeding two
months.
6. Be it further enacted, That if any white person for pay or
compensation, shall assemble with any slaves for the purpose of
teaching, and shall teach any slave to read or write, such
person, or any white person or persons contracting with such
teacher so to act, who shall offend as aforesaid, shall, for
each offence, be fined at the discretion of a jury, in a sum of
not less than ten, nor exceeding one hundred dollars, to he
recovered on an information or indictment.
7. The judges of the superior courts of law, and the
attorneys prosecuting for the commonwealth, in the county and
corporation courts, are hereby required to give this act in
charge to their several grand juries.
8. This act shall be in force from the first day of June
next.
Supplement to the Revised Code of the Laws
of Virginia, Richmond, 1833, chapter 186.
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North Carolina Forbids Slaves or Free
Negroes to Preach, 1831
An act for the better
regulation of the conduct of negroes, slaves and free persons of
color.
That it shall not be lawful
under any pretence for any free negro, slave or free person of
color to preach or exhort in public, or in any manner to
officiate as a preacher or teacher in any prayer meeting or
other association for worship where slaves of different families
are collected together; and if any free negro or free person of
color shall be thereof duly convicted on indictment before any
court having jurisdiction thereof, he shall for each offense
receive not exceeding thirty-nine lashes on his bare back; and
where any slave shall he guilty of a violation of this act, he
shall on conviction before a single magistrate receive not
exceeding thirty-nine lashes on his bare back.
II. That it shall not be
lawful for any slave to go at large as a freeman, exercising his
or her own discretion in the employment of his or her time; nor
shall it he lawful for any slave to keep house to him or herself
as a free person, exercising the like discretion in the
employment of his or her time; and in case the owner of any
slave shall consent or connive at the commission of such
offence, he or she so offending shall be subject to indictment,
and on conviction be fined in the discretion of the Court not
exceeding one hundred dollars: Provided, that nothing herein
shall be construed to prevent any person permitting his or her
slave or slaves to live or keep house upon his or her land for
the purpose of attending to the business of his 6r her master or
mistress.
Laws of North Carolina, 1831-1832, chapter IV.
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Alabama Forbids the Teaching of Slaves to
Read or Write, 1832
Sec. 10. And be it further enacted, That any
person or persons who shall endeavor or attempt to teach any
free person of color, or slave to spell, read, or write, shall
upon Conviction thereof by indictment, be fined in a sum not
less than two hundred and fifty dollars nor more than five
hundred dollars.
Acts Passed at the Thirteenth Annual Session of the
General Assembly of the State of Alabama, 1831-32, p. 16 * * * *
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Sources:
Chapter VI. "The Instruction of Negroes." In Edgar W.
Knight..
A Documentary History of Education in the South before 1860. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina, 1953
Chapter 10 "Up From Slavery: Educational and
other Rights of Negroes." In Edgar W. Knight and Clifton L. Hall. Readings
in American Educational History. New York Appleton-Century-Crofts,
Inc., 1951. Many states had laws prohibiting
the education of blacks; here black youngsters are turned away at the
school door |
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1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus
Created
By Charles C. Mann
I’m
a big fan of Charles Mann’s previous
book
1491:
New Revelations of the Americas Before
Columbus, in which he
provides a sweeping and provocative
examination of North and South America
prior to the arrival of Christopher
Columbus. It’s exhaustively researched
but so wonderfully written that it’s
anything but exhausting to read. With
his follow-up,
1493, Mann has taken it to a
new, truly global level. Building on the
groundbreaking work of Alfred Crosby
(author of
The Columbian Exchange and, I’m
proud to say, a fellow Nantucketer),
Mann has written nothing less than the
story of our world: how a planet of what
were once several autonomous continents
is quickly becoming a single,
“globalized” entity.
Mann not only talked to countless
scientists and researchers; he visited
the places he writes about, and as a
consequence, the book has a marvelously
wide-ranging yet personal feel as we
follow Mann from one far-flung corner of
the world to the next. And always, the
prose is masterful. In telling the
improbable story of how Spanish and
Chinese cultures collided in the
Philippines in the sixteenth century, he
takes us to the island of Mindoro whose
“southern coast consists of a number of
small bays, one next to another like
tooth marks in an apple.” We learn how
the spread of malaria, the potato,
tobacco, guano, rubber plants, and sugar
cane have disrupted and convulsed the
planet and will continue to do so until
we are finally living on one integrated
or at least close-to-integrated Earth.
Whether or not the human instigators of
all this remarkable change will survive
the process they helped to initiate more
than five hundred years ago remains,
Mann suggests in this monumental and
revelatory book, an open question. |
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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updated
21 July 2008
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