The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861
by Carter Godwin Woodson

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Title: The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861
A History of the Education of the Colored People of the
United States from the Beginning of Slavery to the Civil War

Author: Carter Godwin Woodson

Release Date: February 15, 2004 [EBook #11089]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861

A History of the Education of the Colored People of the United States
from the Beginning of Slavery to the Civil War

By

C.G. Woodson.

1919

PREFACE

About two years ago the author decided to set forth in a small volume
the leading facts of the development of Negro education, thinking that
he would have to deal largely with the movement since the Civil War.
In looking over documents for material to furnish a background for
recent achievements in this field, he discovered that he would write
a much more interesting book should he confine himself to the
ante-bellum period. In fact, the accounts of the successful strivings
of Negroes for enlightenment under most adverse circumstances read
like beautiful romances of a people in an heroic age.

Interesting as is this phase of the history of the American Negro, it
has as a field of profitable research attracted only M.B. Goodwin, who
published in the Special Report of the United States Commissioner
of Education of 1871 an exhaustive _History of the Schools for the
Colored Population in the District of Columbia_. In that same document
was included a survey of the _Legal Status of the Colored Population
in Respect to Schools and Education in the Different States_. But
although the author of the latter collected a mass of valuable
material, his report is neither comprehensive nor thorough. Other
publications touching this subject have dealt either with certain
localities or special phases.

Yet evident as may be the failure of scholars to treat this neglected
aspect of our histor