escendants of colored
creoles residing in the district in 1803.[2]

[Footnote 1: Clay, _Digest of the Laws of the State of Alabama_, p.
543.]

[Footnote 2: _Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed_., 1871, p. 323.]

Another difficulty of certain commonwealths had to be overcome.
Apparently Georgia had already incorporated into its laws provisions
adequate to the prevention of the mental improvement of Negroes. But
it was discovered that employed as they had been in various positions
either requiring knowledge, or affording its acquirement, Negroes
would pick up the rudiments of education, despite the fact that they
had no access to schools. The State then passed a law imposing a
penalty not exceeding one hundred dollars for the employment of any
slave or free person of color "in setting up type or other labor about
a printing office requiring a knowledge of reading and writing."[1]
In 1834 South Carolina saw the same danger. In addition to enacting a
more stringent law for the prevention of the teaching of Negroes by
white or colored friends, and for the destruction of their schools,
it provided that persons of African blood should not be employed as
clerks or salesmen in or about any shop or store or house used for
trading.[2]

[Footnote 1: Cobb, _Digest of the Laws of Georgia_, p. 555; and
Prince, _Digest of the Laws of Georgia_, p. 658.]

[Footnote 2: Laws of South Carolina, 1834.]

North Carolina was among the last States to take such drastic measures
for the protection of the white race. In this commonwealth the whites
and blacks had lived on liberal terms. Negroes had up to this time
enjoyed the right of suffrage there. Some attended schools open to
both races. A few even taught white children.[1]

[Footnote 1: Bassett, _Slavery in North Carolina_, p. 74; and
testimonies of various ex-slaves.]

The intense feeling against Negroes engendered by the frequency
of insurrections, however, sufficed to swing the State into the
reactionary column by 1835. An act passed by the Legislature that year
prohibited the public instruction of Negroes, making it impossible
for youth of African descent to get any more education than what
they could in their own family circle.[1] The public school system
established thereafter specifically provided that its benefits should
not extend to any descendant from Negro ancestors to the fourth
generation inclusive.[2] Bearing so grievously this loss of their
social status after they