Learning Freely: Black Education In North Carolina After The Civil War

In the antebellum era, free black children in North Carolina could attend school, but few schools existed to serve this group. All enslaved people were legally banned from any form of schooling on the pain of fines, imprisonment and the whipping post. In September 1864, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton authorized the Superintendent of Freedmen to secure teachers and property for schools for freed people in the South. Northern benevolent groups, which included many free African Americans from the North and the South, as well as the newly freed people themselves, donated thousands of dollars as well as books, clothing, tools and school supplies to these new schools in the Union-held areas. The Federal Government coordinated these efforts and offered protection to teachers and students from violent local attacks.