MAURY COUNTY TENNESSEE, EARLY BLACK SCHOOL HISTORY

This paragraph was written in "Century Review of Maury County", 1903 concerning efforts to found a black school in Columbia during the Civil War and is a wonderfully preserved example of why we should stand up every day and defend our freedoms with all our might.

  First Colored School
Shortly after the Federals invested Columbia a colored exhorter, named Captain Jordan obtained permission to teach his race in the old colored M. E. Church, which stood at Garden and Second Streets. Later, when the Confederate Army camped here, he was arrested under an old State law which prohibited a bondman from teaching or receiving education. He was summoned before Recorder W. J. Andrews in 1864, and sentenced to receive twenty-five lashes. St. Ledger White, as City Marshal executed the sentence, although he says his conscience told him to strike lightly. For this offense against the fourteenth amendment Messrs. Andrews and White, John Latta, Sr., Wiley George. and Jack Porter were arrested. They were kept under guard in a rented room for eighteen days, supplied with all necessities by friends, when they were released on bail until the case should be called by the Federal Court. It was never called.