The post-Stono legislation forbade slaves from growing their own food, earning money, learning to write, or gathering in groups of three or more. It prohibited Black males from traveling together in groups of seven or more without the presence of a white man. It also gave owners the right to kill any enslaved person who was rebellious, and went as far as to regulate which colors and fabrics an enslaved Black person could wear. It was a legal code of complete and total oppression. Because white people were the minority, South Carolina’s white population used cruelty as a tool to suppress their
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