The act
also prohibited the usual unlawful assemblies and the preaching or
exhorting of Negroes except in the presence of five "respectable
slaveholders" or unless the officiating minister was licensed by some
regular church of which the persons thus exhorted were members.[1] It
soon developed that the State had gone too far. It had infringed upon
the rights and privileges of certain creoles, who, being residents
of the Louisiana Territory when it was purchased in 1803, had been
guaranteed the rights of citizens of the United States. Accordingly in
1833 the Mayor and the Aldermen of Mobile were authorized by law to
grant licenses to such persons as they might deem suitable to instruct
for limited periods, in that city and the counties of Mobile and
Baldwin, the free colored children, who were descendants 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.
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