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.
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