My point was that after Lincoln died, there was very little help regarding education for the former slaves. What real help was available was through isolated, private endeavors.
A few had patrons, or enormous personal gumption, and did well. But the vast majority were left alone, and ignorant. They had 'literacy' tests imposed upon them, in order to qualify to vote - but nobody had bothered to teach very many of them to read. One of the tragedies of Emancipation, is that these people were set loose and left helpless, in many ways.
Here is what Shelby Foote said in an interview:
The institution of slavery is a stain on this nation's soul that will never be cleansed. It is just as wrong as wrong can be, a huge sin, and it is on our soul.
There's a second sin that's almost as great and that's emancipation. They told four million five hundred thousand people, You are free, hit the road. And we're still suffering from that. Three quarters of them couldn't read or write, not one tenth of them had a profession except for farming, and yet they were turned loose and told, Go your way.
In 1877 the last Union troops were withdrawn after a dozen years of being in the South to assure compliance with the law. Once they were withdrawn all the Jim Crow laws and everything else came down on the blacks. Their schools were inferior in every sense. They had the Freedmen's Bureau, which did, perhaps, some good work, but it was mostly a joke, corrupt in all kinds of ways.
So they had no help. Just turned loose on the world, and they were waifs. It's a very sad thing. There should have been a huge program for schools. There should have been all kinds of employment provided for them. Not modern welfare, you can't expect that in the middle of the nineteenth century, but there should have been some earnest effort to prepare these people for citizenship.
They were not prepared, and operated under horrible disadvantages once the army was withdrawn, and some of the consequences are very much with us today.
By the way: in this interview, Foote said that he would have fought on the side of the Confederacy, saying,
"The political correctness of today is no way to look at the middle of the nineteenth century":
I can't find a direct link to this original interview - it seems to have been 'cleansed', and you can only find it through websites that view it in a derogatory way; but that is what the man said.
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/06/the-convenient-suspension-of-disbelief/240318/
I hope that's enough "detail' for you. But I'm curious: why are you so darn angry???)
That's your source?
BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Even though it was illegal to do so, there were slave owners who taught may of their slaves to read and write.
If one slave ( usually a free man, who had been captured and sold into slavery or a house slave who had been taught or just managed to teach himself somehow ) could read and write, he would secretly teach others how to.
I'm NOT claiming that it was all instantaneous, nor that suddenly great schools fro negros popped up like mushrooms after constant rain; however, your claim and Foote's are inaccurate. Yours more than his.
For starters, I highly recommend you read : ARISTOCRATS OF COLOR, by Willard B. Gatewood and OUR KIND OF PEOPLE, by Lawrence Otis Graham.
Booker T. Washington was born in 1856, as a slave. Yet not only could he read and write, he graduated from college and was hardly the exception!
What you neglect to remember ( or perhaps even know ), is that many whites didn't graduate from grammar school back then, let alone go high school, withe even fewer going to college !
After the Civil War, negros raised money to build schools and hire teacher...often going without to do so. IT USED TO BE VERY IMPORTANT AND MEAN A GREAT DEAL TO ALL OF THEM, TO HAVE EVEN A BIT OF EDUCATION!
There's a very interesting silent, from the very early teens, written by, acted by, directed by, produced by, and filmed by negros! These films were called "RACE MOVIES" and were made into the talkie era. I've seen many of them and not only are they interesting, they're VERY good!
One of these films dealt with education and a woman teacher's tenacious endeavors to raise some much needed money for her grammar school.
There have been/still are great schools, medium schools and lousy schools all across this nation which every child, no matter what race, sex, and religion has and does go to.
And as an aside, some elite boarding schools, sans AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, have admitted negros to their classes, for most of the 20th century, if not earlier.
Ever hear of Madame C.J. Walker? If not....go cfind out about her!
No, she never went to college, married ( for the first time at 14 ), but she could read, write, and do math. Not only that, but she became the first female, self made many multi millionaire! She was born in 1867, the first member of her family to be born free, and she was smart as a could be.
I post FACTS; Foote, originally just a writer of fiction, wrote about his opinions, based on a bit of fact and a whole LOT of bleeding hearted opinion/bias/generalization.