Black Americans setting fire to a library in a country where their slave ancestors were forbidden to learn how to read.
Irony: The Mark of Quality Literature
with a caveat
Slaves (and indentured) were taught how to read select Bible passages (and permitted to draw pictures) because it was essential to conversion to Christianity from Islam or paganism. Slaves (and indentured) were generally not taught to write (writing being a trait of upper classes at the time), although Jupiter Hammon published a poem in 1761 and Phyllis Wheatley published a book of poems in 1773. Laws preventing both reading and writing were passed around 1830, but LA, PA and NYC offered schooling from the 1780’s.
The first laws against writing were passed in (spanish) SC in 1740 and in VA in 1741 in response to the 1739 Stono Rebellion and the “panic of NY” in 1741 (following a long list of rebellions beginning in 1663, and those in 1672, 1687, 1691, 1708, 1711, 1720, 1712, 1729, 1730 and 1738).
Laws that banned teaching reading were passed in 1830, 1839 and 1841 in response to the continued rebellions of 1764, 1793, 1796, 1800, 1805, 1811, 1816, 1820, the 1829 Camden revolt that resulted in the burning of 85 buildings, the 1831 Nat Turner rebellion, 1835 TX rebellion, and the 1839 and 1841 ship rebellions of the Amistad and Creole . MO and TX passed literacy laws as late as 1847 and 1860. (John Meachum responded to MO 1847 laws by buying a riverboat and holding school in the middle of the Mississippi river.)
These laws weren’t arbitrary. They were in part, a means towards survival and to calm the unrest and rebellious nature fomented by abolitionist leaflets and put an end to roving gangs of slaves that periodically harassed and killed landowners. If slaves couldn’t read about other rebellions, or correspond insurrection plans to others, or forge their own passes and freedom papers, it was thought calm could come to the land. In spite of these laws, wives of slave owners and especially young children, passed on reading and writing to slave children, who taught their parents in secret. So while a writing ban became more common from 1830 on, by 1865 it is estimated that at minimum 10% of slaves could write and most could read at probably a third-grade level.
https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/slavery-iv-slave-rebellions
http://slaverebellion.info/index.php?page=united-states-insurrections
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_during_the_slave_period_in_the_United_States