Margaret Crittenden Douglass

Margaret Crittendon Douglass (born c. 1822; year of death unknown) was a Southern white woman who served one month in jail in 1854 for teaching free black children to read in Norfolk, Virginia. Refusing to hire a defense attorney, she defended herself in court and later published a book about her experiences. The case drew public attention to the highly restrictive laws against black literacy in the pre-Civil War American South.

Early life

Douglass was born in 1822 in Washington, D.C., but moved in her childhood to Charleston, South Carolina, where she married. By age fourteen, she had given birth to a daughter, Hannah Rosa. She also birthed a son, who died. Nothing is known about her husband. In 1845, she and her daughter relocated to Norfolk, Virginia, where she established herself in a modest apartment in a tenement neighborhood and made ends meet by running her own business as a seamstress and vest maker. She chose not to participate in social activities with her white neighbors in the nearby tenements, who she felt were "not of the most refined class". She notes in her memoir that this made her unpopular in the neighborhood. She described her life as "frugal and retiring", and that it was "necessary for me to labor incessantly".

The school

In 1853 she paid a business visit to the barber shop of a free black man named Robinson. He was a man of influence in the community of more than 1500 free people of color who lived in Norfolk at that time. His two young sons were busy studying a reading primer, so Douglass asked Robinson if there was a school in town where free black children could learn to read. Robinson said that there was only the Sunday school at Christ Church where, he said, "they didn't learn much." Douglass returned home and asked her teenaged daughter, Hannah Rosa, if she would like to tutor the boys. Hannah Rosa said she would, and the boys began to receive free reading lessons at the Douglass home, using the books they received at church. Eventually, Robinson took his sons back to the barber shop where he needed their help, and sent his two daughters instead. In her memoir, Douglass states that the two girls were intelligent, attentive, made rapid progress, and were "a source of pleasure to us."