after so
many years well spent in faithful service to our community. As a citizen
and one who has always been most interested in the education of our
youth, I wish to add my thanks to those which are felt, if not expressed
by the many who know of your devotion to and success in leading the
young in the way in which they should go.

"Though your active participation in this work is about to cease, may
you long be spared as an example to those who follow you is the earnest
hope of

"Yours very sincerely and respectfully,

(Signed) "Charles T. Wilkins"

W. B. HARTGROVE

FOOTNOTES:

[1] For many of the facts set forth in this article the writer is
indebted to Miss Fannie M. Richards, Robert A. Pelham, and C. G. Woodson.

[1a] Woodson, The Ed. of the Negro Prior to 1861, pp. 92, 217, 218.

[2] The law was as follows: Be it enacted by the General Assembly that
if any free person of color, whether infant or adult, shall go or be
sent or carried beyond the limits of this Commonwealth for the purpose
of being educated, he or she shall be deemed to have emigrated from the
State and it shall not be lawful for him or her to return to the same;
and if any such person shall return within the limits of the State
contrary to the provisions of this act, he or she being an infant shall
be bound out as an apprentice until the age of 21 years, by the
overseers of the poor of the county or corporation where he or she may
be, and at the expiration of that period, shall be sent out of the State
agreeably to the provisions of the laws now in force, or which may
hereafter be enacted to prohibit the migration of free persons of color
to this State; and if such person be an adult, he or she shall be sent
in like manner out of the Commonwealth; and if any persons having been
so sent off, shall hereafter return within the State, he or she so
offending shall be dealt with and punished in the same manner as is or
may be prescribed by law in relating to other persons of color returning
to the State after having been sent therefrome. Acts of the General
Assembly of Virginia, 1838, p. 76.

[3] The following enactments of the Virginia General Assembly will give
a better idea of the extent of this humiliation:

4. Be it further enacted that all meetings of free Negroes or
mulattoes at any school house, church, meeting-house or other place
for teaching them reading or writing, either in the day or night,
under whatsoev