Title: Anti-literacy laws in the United States - Wikipedia
Headings: Anti-literacy laws in the United States
Anti-literacy laws in the United States
State anti-literacy laws
Resistance
References

Content: E]very assemblage of negroes for the purpose of instruction in reading or writing, or in the night time for any purpose, shall be an unlawful assembly. Any justice may issue his warrant to any office or other person, requiring him to enter any place where such assemblage may be, and seize any negro therein; and he, or any other justice, may order such negro to be punished with stripes." In North Carolina, black people who disobeyed the law were sentenced to whipping while whites received a fine and/or jail time. Restrictions on the education of black students were not limited to the South. While teaching blacks in the North was not illegal, many Northern states, counties, and cities barred black students from public schools. What few schools there were for black students were projects funded by donations from Quakers and other philanthropists. The attempt in 1831 to open a college for black students in New Haven was met with such overwhelming local resistance that the project was almost immediately abandoned (see Simeon Jocelyn ). Private schools in New Hampshire and Connecticut that attempted to educate black and white students together were destroyed by mobs (see Noyes Academy and Canterbury Female Boarding School ). Resistance
Educators in the South found ways to both circumvent and challenge the law.