16. Some enslaved people were given access to education as children
Religion was a driving force among the settlers of Virginia. Religious education was mandatory at the College of William and Mary and in elementary schools. The Bible was a source of both religious and literacy training. Among the Virginia elite, the education of slaves, at least as regarded literacy, was a moral obligation rooted in Christian beliefs. In the 17th century, Virginia law connected Christian baptism with personal freedom. That law was changed in 1667, in part to allow slave owners to teach their enslaved workers to read the Bible and the Catechism without fear they could use baptism into the Anglican Church as a claim to freedom. Slave owners were encouraged to teach their enslaved workers to read, though many balked at the idea of teaching them to write. Slaves capable of writing could avail themselves of passes allowing them to travel unsupervised, making escape more practicable.
How many slaves learned enough to be considered literate is debated. Newspapers advertisements from the late 18th and early 19th century identified as many as five percent of runaway slaves as literate. Slave children were often taught to read and write by the children of the owner’s family. Others attended classes on the plantation in their early years. Adult slaves learned to read by fire or candlelight after their long days of labor. Artisans and mechanics learned to read as part of their training, and rudimentary arithmetic was required of carpenters and other skilled trades. In towns such as Williamsburg and Fredericksburg, religious schools taught the children of slaves to read and write, when their enslavers allowed them to attend. Attitudes towards teaching literacy to enslaved workers hardened in the 1830s, following events which terrified the enslavers throughout Virginia.