Butchart, Ronald E
Description
Encyclopedia article about freedmen's education in Georgia during Reconstruction. From the first days of their freedom, Georgia's freed slaves demanded formal education. Legislation passed in 1829 had made it a crime to teach slaves to read, and legislation and white attitudes discouraged literacy within Georgia's small free black community. Yet when schools for freedpeople opened in early 1865, they were crowded to overflowing. Within a year of black freedom, at least 8,000 former slaves were attending schools in Georgia; eight years later, black schools struggled to contain nearly 20,000 students.
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