The case of Mrs. Margaret Douglass
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In mid-century, at the same time that religious instruction was
waning as the primary goal of education -- at least among reformers
-- religious instruction of free and enslaved blacks in the South
appeared to take on a renewed urgency. A number of slave rebellions,
including one led by Nat Turner in 1831, which involved several free
and literate blacks and which he claimed was divinely inspired, had
underscored for whites the need to maintain tight control over the
literacy of blacks and the tenor of their religious beliefs.
Although every southern state had outlawed the teaching of reading
and writing to enslaved blacks (and in some cases, free blacks as
well), there is considerable evidence that some whites defied the
law.
For example, in 1853, a Mrs. Margaret Douglass of
Norfolk, Virginia, "being greatly interested in the religious and
moral instruction of colored children and finding that the Sunday
school where they were allowed to attend was not sufficient," began
teaching free black children to read and write in her home. Mrs.
Douglass pleaded ignorance of the law, having believed that it
applied only to the teaching of slaves, and the mayor announced his
intention to dismiss the charge; however, the Grand Jury chose to
indict her. In her defense, she demonstrated that teaching free
black children to read had been a common practice in the city's
Sunday schools for years. The jury's penalty of one dollar was
overturned by a Judge Baker, who imposed a month-long prison
sentence, "as an example to all others in like cases."
In
rendering judgement, Baker spoke at length about the importance of
religious instruction of blacks and its role in making slaves moral
and happy, but stressed that it should be kept separate from
"intellectual" instruction. He blamed this prohibition against black
education on "abolition pamphlets and inflammatory documents"
intended "to be distributed among our Southern negroes to induce
them them to cut our throats."
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2945.html (Link
updated: 12 May 2022)
This article forms part of our
Slave Trade series.
Any contributions will be
gratefully accepted
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