Slaves and their offspring had been given…

Slaves and their offspring had been given little more than religious instruction.

Indeed, in 1797 a law in Barbados had made it illegal to teach reading and writing to slaves.

In the early nineteenth century, the endowment from the Mico Trust—originally established in 1670 to redeem Christian slaves in the Barbary States of North Africa—had opened a series of schools for blacks and free nonwhite pupils throughout the Caribbean and three teacher-training colleges—Mico in Antigua and Jamaica and Codrington in Barbados.