New laws in Virginia prohibited blacks, free or slave, from practicing preaching, prohibited blacks from owning firearms, and forbade anyone to teach slaves how to read.

It was Quaker practice to teach slaves how to read and write and to free them at age 21.

The third time however, he successfully got away to the North but ended up coming back in order to teach slaves how to read.

Grimké was the first African American to teach former slaves in the South and co-founder of the Colored Women's League in 1894.

He spent much of his time teaching slaves and praying with them.

When Douglass was hired out to William Freeland, he taught other slaves on the plantation to read the New Testament at a weekly Sunday school.

Despite the risk, she secretly taught slaves and free blacks to read and write, which was prohibited by law.

One nocturnal raid netted John Read, a local minister who offended Southern sensibilities by teaching black slaves to read.

During the Civil War she traveled to Vicksburg, Mississippi, to teach recently freed former slaves.

Methodists taught former slaves how to read and write, consequently enriching a literate African-American society.