Personal Narrative or Mrs. Margaret Douglass, The...Colored Children to Read.
Account Of Margaret Douglass’ Trial
For Teaching Slaves & Freed Blacks
And
Speaking Out Against White Slave Owner’s Rape Of Black Female Slaves
[Abolition] Douglass, Margaret. The Personal Narrative of Mrs. Margaret Douglass, A Southern Woman, Who Was Imprisoned for One Month in the Common Jail of Norfolk, Under the Laws of Virginia, for the Crime of Teaching Free Colored Children to Read. Boston: John P. Jewett & Cleveland, Ohio, Jewett et al, 1854.
8vo; portrait lacking; text pages lightly foxed; self wrappers; spine worn; covers professionally restored and resewn; edges chipped.
First edition of this rare pamphlet detailing the trial of the first person to be prosecuted and convicted under the 1842 Virginia law enjoinging anyone from teaching blacks to read; four copies located on RLIN/OCLC. Though not an active abolitionist, Margaret Douglass, a good-hearted, inpecunious Southern woman of genteel breeding, believed that free Negroes should be instructed to read and write in order to improve their religious and moral character, regardless of the law—which was first passed in 1831 in part in reaction to the Nat Turner slave rebellion, and re-enacted and strengthened in 1842.
Mrs. Douglass worshipped at Christ Episcopal Church, as did many leaders in the city of Norfolk. This church had a Sunday school for free black children who could receive oral instruction but could not be taught through reading or writing. Mrs. Douglass was aware of the laws against teaching slaves literacy, but did not realize it extended to freedmen. In June of 1852 she and her daughter Rosa started a school in her rented four-room house for several black children, which over time grew larger. One day a constable appeared at her door and took her and the frightened children to the mayor of Norfolk. The mayor let the children go, gave Margaret Douglass a warning, and dismissed the charges. However, sometime later, she and her daughter received a summons to appear before the Circuit Court to answer charges that she and Rosa “did…unlawfully assembly with diverse Negroes, for the purpose of instructing them to read and to write, and did instruct them to read and to write, contrary to the Act of the General Assembly…and against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth of Virginia.” Douglass was unable to pay for a good lawyer but she had faith in the correctness of her case. She acted as her own defense attorney, pleading, among other good arguments, that she had not realized the law extended beyond slaves. She was outspoken in her beliefs that Negroes should be educated and was doing rather well until she brought up the taboo subject of miscegenation, blaming white men for its existence. She states, “Ask how white blood got beneath those tawny skins, and let nature herself account for the exhibition of these instincts. Blame the authors of this devilish mischief, but not the innocent victims of it.”- Personal Narrative, 41. The judge’s opinion is also printed, and in the end Mrs. Douglass served a month in jail. Foner and Pacheco, Three Who Dared: Prudence Crandall, Margaret Douglass, Myrtilla Miner – Champions of Antebellum Black Education, 55-95. International Library of Negro Life and History, 172. (7961)
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