The abolitionist and writer Frederick Douglass is known for many things, but perhaps among the most significant is his views on education’s relationship to slavery. Douglass himself was born into slavery in Maryland in 1818.
Douglass described in his 1845 autobiography how one of his enslavers, Mrs. Auld, began teaching him to read when he was a child. Mrs. Auld’s husband ordered her to stop giving Douglass lessons.
“Just at this point of my progress, Mr. Auld found out what was going on, and at once forbade Mrs. Auld to instruct me further, telling her, among other things, that it was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read,” Douglass writes. “To use his own words, further, he said, ‘If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell. A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master.’”
Congress enacted the 13th Amendment on Jan. 31, 1865, abolishing slavery. It was not until June 19, 1865, that word of the amendment reached enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, marking the origin of the Juneteenth holiday.
The Biden administration declared Juneteenth a federal holiday in 2021. Today, Juneteenth commemorates the end of slavery in the U.S. But the story for formerly enslaved people continued to unfold in complex ways well after Juneteenth, including when it came to their educational journeys.
Juneteenth made clear that freedom was not just confined to someone’s physical enslavement, but mental enslavement as well, bound in the laws that barred enslaved people from receiving an education in Southern states.
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Making learning illegal
In 1739, the Stono slave rebellion took place in South Carolina. Fearing that educated slaves would go on to plot future rebellions, South Carolina passed an anti-literacy law in 1740, banning slaves from being taught how to read.
Most Southern states soon followed with anti-literacy laws of their own between 1740 and 1834, in the hopes of preventing any further slave rebellions. These laws applied to both enslaved and free Black people.
Despite these laws, thousands of enslaved people still learned to read and write in the antebellum South. Literacy was a means of freedom.
Meanwhile, the first African Free School for Black children was established in New York City in 1787. The one-room schoolhouse began with 40 students, the majority of whom had parents who were formerly enslaved. Six additional, similar schools were created with public funding by 1824.
Juneteenth and the path to freedom
Juneteenth is a complicated story of formerly enslaved people’s faith and resilience, as well as white supremacists’ hate and resistance to formerly enslaved people experiencing liberation.
It also offers an important reminder that true freedom must also include the right to an education.
Formerly enslaved individuals had various responses to their newfound freedom in 1865, ranging from gratitude and joy to despair and loss.
Many formerly enslaved people decided to leave plantations and Southern states to reunite with family members and communities separated by slavery.
Others opted to remain where they had been enslaved, seeking to experience freedom in familiar surroundings. In fact, the vast majority of freed people remained in the South.
Regardless of their choices, the approximately 4 million formerly enslaved people challenged the U.S. to acknowledge their liberation and welcome them as equals.
Relentlessly, they endeavored to establish themselves as free citizens within the nation. One of these newly freed people’s primary goals was to receive an education.
Learning to read, write and more
After the Civil War, newly freed people gathered in churches, homes, cellars, sheds, meetinghouses and even under shade trees in the fields where they worked the crops to learn how to read and write. They also learned basic job skills, such as the ability to read and understand labor contracts.
Many of the teachers had no formal training, and some of them were local Black people who were self-taught.
Other educators included white teachers from the South and the North, sent by churches and aid societies.
White aid societies and religious organizations from the North, including the American Missionary Association and the National Freedman’s Relief Association, sometimes funded these free schools for formerly enslaved Black people.
However, most of the money to fund these schools came from the newly freed Americans, who privately paid for their schools.
While about 90% of the Black population in Southern states were illiterate in 1865, this percentage dropped to 70% by 1880.
A journey into higher education
Newly freed Black people also began to have more options for higher education.
The first historically Black college and university, Cheyney University, was established in Pennsylvania in 1837, well before the Civil War. A total of four HBCUs were established by the end of the Civil War in 1865.
At this point, true liberation began, as a growing number of HBCUs offered academic freedom to Black Americans, who otherwise would have been prohibited from attending most colleges and universities.
In the 15 years following the Civil War, a total of 59 HBCUs had opened their doors to Black students.
In 1867, by act of Congress, Howard University was established in Washington, D.C. It provided not only basic college courses but also programs in law, medicine, education and pharmaceuticals.
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A promise that requires education
A whole new set of challenges and opportunities greeted the formerly enslaved Black Americans who sought freedom in the North. Most arrived in cities such as Chicago and New York, where they found some humanitarian support but also racial discrimination and poverty.
Their lives were constantly filled with both legal and racial hostility.
Education ranked high among the free people as a priority, as they looked to gain new skills and advance in life. They learned not only the basics in reading and math, but also job skills, citizenship and advanced learning in professional careers, such as law, medicine, pharmacy and teaching.
Ultimately, Juneteenth offered a promise of freedom – but education was necessary to make it happen.
