In a message dated 2/19/02 12:47:45 PM Eastern Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

<< Does anyone know whether or not slaves were forbidden BY LAW to read and
 write in post-Nat Turner Virginia?
  >>
It is a popular misconception that  slaves were forbidden to read and write
in Virginia. In fact, many were taught on the plantations to read and write
and there was never a law against this practice, nor a law that punished a
slave just because the slave engaged in the exercise of reading and writing.
It was also the private practice of many plantation owners to prevent their
slaves from learning to read and write so they would be less independent and
less able to flee. What the law recognized was organized teaching, first
addressed in the Code of 1819, c. 111, sec. 15: "That all meetings and
assemblages of slaves or free negroes or mulattoes mixing and associating
with such slaves  at any meeting house or houses  or any other place or
places, in the night, or at any school or schools for teaching them reading
and writing, either in the day or night, under whatsoever pretest,  shall be
deemed and considered an unlawful assembly.." The statute goes on to provide
for enforcement ans punishment. The prohibition against unlawful assembly
dates from 1804 (Shepherd c. 119, vol. 3 p. 108) but the "school or schools"
provision is new in 1819. The act, in Dec 1796 (Shepherd vol. 2 p. 3), to
establish "public schools" did not include negroes or mulattoes.

Richard Dixon

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