Table of Contents:
  • In secret places: acquiring literacy in slave communities
  • A coveted possession: literacy in the first days of freedom
  • The men are actually clamoring for books: African American soldiers and the educational mission
  • We must get education for ourselves and our children: advocacy for education
  • We are striving to do business on our own hook: organizing schools on the ground
  • We are laboring under many difficulties: African American teachers in freedpeople's schools
  • A long and tedious road to travel for knowledge: textbooks and freedpeople's schools
  • If anybody wants an education, it is me: students in freedpeople's schools
  • First movings of the waters: the creation of common school systems for Black and white students
  • Epilogue
  • Appendix. African Americans, literacy, and the law in the antebellum South.