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As slavery ended, Black Georgians developed unique solutions to the many problems they faced in attaining literacy and other educational goals. In terms of some of their earlier efforts, we describe a pattern in which local Black communities in Georgia sought to create and fund their own schools at primary, secondary, and post-secondary levels. In certain cases, Black Georgians even managed to maintain autonomy from Northern and Southern Whites as they developed schools and trained Black teachers. Further, we contend that the end of Reconstruction derailed many of these efforts to create independent, Black-controlled spaces in the sphere of education. Indeed, despite the successes of these earlier efforts, the model of community-controlled and autonomous schools has been eclipsed in favor of efforts to integrate and include Blacks into mainstream American society. Finally, we conclude that the educational model and praxis developed by Black Georgians during Reconstruction described here has implications for possible solutions to present day problems.

Gabriel and the 1800 conspiracy he helped plan in Richmond, Virginia, had reverberations around the Atlantic. A range of historians have explored the ways in which Haiti, France, Spain, Liberia, and even Sierra Leone formed a constellation of influences on, or legacies of, the 1800 plot. This article assesses the fuller transnational context of Gabriel's conspiracy and draws links between its aftermath and concrete plans by Virginia lawmakers to colonize rebellious enslaved peoples and free Blacks in French Louisiana. Two decades before the founding of Liberia, politicians in and from Virginia imagined French Louisiana as a site of Black exile and as a solution to the persistent threat of insurrection. This imagination turned to political lobbying as many of the same lawmakers vexed by the implications of the 1800 plot moved to pressure Thomas Jefferson to purchase Louisiana and to exert direct control over this planned colony of Black exiles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Caribbean and Southern: Transnational Perspectives on the U.S. South. Edited by Helen A. Regis. Southern Anthropological Society Proceedings, No. 38. (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, c. 2006. Pp. [...]