The tension between the kind of Christian education white slave owners wanted their slaves to have—compared to true Christian education—runs throughout the history of slavery, especially in the United States. There were free African Americans in North America in the years immediately following the battle for independence from Great Britain. In fact, an African woman named Katie Ferguson is believed to have started the first religiously oriented Sunday School for African Americans in New York City in 1793.
The churches started by free people of African origin stood as symbols to slaves—and to unenlightened whites. It was not unusual for these churches and their members to be harassed by mobs or by legal restrictions. Where white-established churches existed for slaves, either a slave owner, a hired white preacher, or a slave who could be trusted would do the preaching. "Be nice to massa and missus; don't be mean; be obedient, and work hard. That was all the Sunday school lesson they taught us," Quoted in Julius Lester, To Be A Slave (New York: Scholastic Inc., 1968), p. 78. said one slave.
Yet the slaves gathered an understanding of the Scriptures beyond what they were taught. The story of Moses' struggle to free the children of Israel and of Joseph's time in Eygpt, for example, resonated very deeply in the African American community.
