GEORGIA
passed a law in 1770 (copied from S. C. Statutes, passed in 1740), fixing a fine of £20 for teaching a slave to read or write. In 1829 the Legislature enacted the following law:
"If any slave, negro, or free person of color, or any white person, shall teach any other slave, negro, or free person of color to read or write either written or printed characters, the said free person of color or slave shall be punished by fine and whipping, or fine or whipping, at the discretion of the court; and if a white person so offend, he, she, or they shall be punished with a fine not exceeding $500, and imprisonment in the common jail at the discretion of the court."
In 1833 the above law was consolidated into a penal code. A penalty of $100 was provided against persons who employed any slave or free person of Color to set type or perform any other labor about a printing-office requiring a knowledge of reading or writing. During the same year an ordinance was passed in the city of Savannah, "that if any person shall teach or cause to be taught any slave or free person of color to read or write within the city, or who shall keep a school for that purpose, he or she shall be fined in a sum not exceeding $100 for each and every such offense; and if the offender be a slave or free person of color, he or she may also be whipped, not exceeding thirty-nine lashes."
In the summer of 1850 a series of articles by Mr. F. C. Adams appeared in one of the papers of Savannah, advocating the education of the Negroes as a means of increasing their value and of attaching them to their masters. The subject was afterward taken up in the Agricultural Convention which met at Macon in September of the same year. The matter was again brought up in September, 1851, in the Agricultural Convention, and after being debated, a resolution was passed that a petition be presented to the Legislature for a law granting permission to educate the slaves. The petition was presented to the Legislature, and Mr. Harlston introduced a bill in the winter of 1852, which was discussed and passed in the lower House, to repeal the old law, and to grant to the masters the privilege of educating their slaves. The bill was lost in the senate by two or three votes.[60]
ILLINOIS'
school laws contain the word "white" from beginning to end. There is no prohibition against the education of Colored persons; but there being no mention of them, is evidence that they were purposely omitted. Separate schools were established for Colored children before the war, and a few white schools opened their doors to them. The Free Mission Institute at Quincy was destroyed by a mob from Missouri in ante-bellum days, because Colored persons were admitted to the classes.
INDIANA
denied the right of suffrage to her Negro population in the constitution of 1851. No provision was made for the education of the Negro children. And the cruelty of the laws that drove the Negro from the State, and pursued him while in it, gave the poor people no hope of peaceful habitation, much less of education.
KENTUCKY