Anti-literacy laws in the United States
Anti-literacy laws affected enslaved persons, freedmen, and, in some cases, all people of color in many slave states before and during the American Civil War. Some laws arose from concerns that literate enslaved persons could forge the documents required to escape to a free state. According to William M. Banks, "Many slaves who learned to write did indeed achieve freedom by this method. The wanted posters for runaways often mentioned whether the escapee could write." Anti-literacy laws also arose from fears of insurrection by enslaved persons, particularly around the time of abolitionist David Walker's 1829 publication of Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, which openly advocated rebellion, and Nat Turner's Rebellion of 1831. The first anti-literacy law was passed by the legislature of the colony of South Carolina in 1740. Enacted in response to the 1739 Stono Rebellion, it prohibited enslaved people from learning to write and restricted their ability to read to prevent an organized...
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