that I have examined school-boys and young men of colour in different
parts of the country, in the most simple parts of Murray's English
Grammar, and not more than one in thirty was able to give a correct
answer to my interrogations. If any one contradicts me, let him step
out of his door into the streets of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, or
Baltimore, (no use to mention any other, for the Christians are too
charitable further south or west!)--I say, let him who disputes me,
step out of his door into the streets of either of those four cities,
and promiscuously collect one hundred school boys or young men of
colour, _who have been to school_, and who are considered by the
coloured people to have received an excellent education, because,
perhaps, some of them can write a good hand, but who notwithstanding
their neat writing, may be almost as ignorant, in comparison, as
horses. And, I say it, he will hardly find (in this enlightened day,
and in the midst of this _charitable_ people) five in one hundred, who
are able to correct the false grammar of their language. The cause of
this almost universal ignorance amongst us, I appeal to our
school-masters to declare. Here is a fact, which I this very minute
take from the mouth of a young coloured man, who has been to school in
this state (Massachusetts) nearly nine years, and who knows grammar
this day, _nearly_ as well as he did the day he first entered the
school-house, under a white master. This young man says--"My master
would never allow me to study grammar."--I asked him why? "The school
committee," said he, "forbid the colored children learning
grammar--they would not allow any but the white children to study
grammar."

It is a notorious fact that the major part of the white Americans
have, ever since we have been among them, tried to keep us ignorant
and make us believe that God made us and our children to be slaves to