NARRATOR
On St. Catherine's Island, Tunis Campbell's township was flourishing. Three hundred and sixty-nine settlers occupied fifty-four slave dwellings, left from the old days. They grew fruits and vegetables of all kinds. But what they wanted were schools. "There is one sin that slavery committed against me that I will never forgive," remembered one man. "It robbed me of my education."

WALKER
Before the Civil War, maybe no more than ten, fifteen percent of the black population of the South was literate. To learn how to read was a revolutionary act. They understood that it was necessary if they were to take their place as freed people within the Union, that they have the rudiments of education to survive.

NARRATOR
After the war, freedmen who had secretly educated themselves quickly opened schools in warehouses, on barges, even in old slave markets. And the Freedmen's Bureau and Northern missionaries built thousands more throughout the South. At St. Catherine's, Campbell used his own savings to bring teachers down from the North. Then he called on his wife, Harriet, in New York.

DUNCAN
He writes a letter to Harriet, says, "Bring the sons down. We're going to establish the schools. We're on an island of our own. There are no white people here and we're going to lift up children. Bring all the primers you have, and please join us." This is the first time he's seen his wife and sons in about two years.

NARRATOR
Harriet and Tunis taught side by side with Northern teachers. Campbell reported that eighty children and adults on St Catherine's and sixty on nearby Sapelo Island were enrolled in schools. More than a thousand students attended Campbell's makeshift academies.

DUNCAN
The adults are being taught at night. They need to deal with white people more as equals. And to do that, they have to be literate.

NARRATOR
White planters watching from the mainland resented the schools and the entire settlement, not just because the land had been seized from one of their own, but because of Campbell's ambition and independence.

WALKER
People like Campbell were viewed as black people "out of their place." He can think for himself in ways that whites find hard to believe that a black person can think. This means, then, that history has somehow spun out of control.

NARRATOR
By June 1865, Jacob Waldburg, the white planter who had owned St. Catherine's, was back in Georgia. He demanded that Campbell get off his land.

DUNCAN
The planters are holding up deeds to the islands that are two hundred years old, or one hundred fifty years old. They said, "No, wait a minute. This is a nation of laws, and see, my great-granddaddy had this deed. And yours comes from a possessory title given to you in time of war for abandoned lands? How does that affect my promise of property rights under the Constitution of the United States?"

NARRATOR
Waldburg got his answer: St. Catherine's Congress passed a law forbidding any white person from setting foot on the island. Campbell's militia stood ready to enforce it.