States Systematically Ban Teaching Enslaved People to Read

Following slave rebellions and abolitionist literature, Southern states passed laws criminalizing the education of enslaved people. Georgia (1829) imposed fines and whipping for teaching enslaved people to read or write. North Carolina (1830) extended the ban to free Black people. Virginia (1831, after Nat Turner) banned all assemblies for instruction. Alabama, South Carolina, and Louisiana passed similar statutes. By 1835 it was illegal to teach an enslaved person to read throughout the Deep South. The laws reflected the slaveholder understanding that literacy enabled resistance, access to abolitionist ideas, and freedom suits.