Certain white men in every southern community made it possible for many of them to learn in spite of opposition.

Slaveholders were not long in discovering that a thorough execution of the law was impossible when Negroes were following practically all the higher pursuits of labor in the South.

Masters who had children known to be teaching slaves protected their benevolent sons and daughters from the rigors of the law.

Preachers, on finding out that the effort at verbal education could not convey Christian truths to an undeveloped mind, overcame the opposition in their localities and taught the colored people as before.

Negroes themselves, regarding learning as forbidden fruit, stole away to secret places at night to study under the direction of friends.