Legal restrictions or prohibitions against teaching slaves to read are
pretty widely mentioned for the antebellum period -- and yet the reports to
the Bishop of London or the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel,
etc., from 18th-century clergymen show that Virginia's Anglican ministers
were regularly teaching the Bible and Catechism (as well as administering
communion) to enslaved Virginians -- and presumably many evangelical
encouraged biblical literacy as well.

    I'm curious about precisely when and how laws and practice changed; I
would be grateful either for references to the statutes by which teaching
slaves to read came to be illegal, or perhaps reliable scholarship about
this.  And curious, too, about whether the timing and nature of this change
in Virginia law and practice was similar or different from adjacent
Southern colonies/states.

   Thank you - and Happy Thanksgiving to all (regardless of where the
holiday originated).

Jon Kukla
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