Bob Klahn -> John Massey wrote:

 DC>>>>>>> Approx 88% of whites could read.  Only
about 22% of blacks were
 DC>>>>>> literate.

 DC>>>>>> see tinyurl.com/63k7t7

 JM>>>>>> Ok I looked. It said nothing about southern whites.

 DC>>>>> The info should be sufficient to make a reasonable
conclusion.

 JM>>>> Bovine excrement, You have shown nothing that shows poor
 JM>>>> whites in the south were more literate than slaves.

 BK>>>  He did say a reasonable conclusion, not firm proof. Like I said,
 BK>>>  the stats I found were not broken down in detail either.

 JM>> With out stats on share croppers and other dirt poor
 JM>> southerners in the 1860/70's, I don't think a fair
 JM>> conclusion can be made. I sure don't think it come close to
 JM>> proving the claim made.

 BK>  Well, the actual breakdown is not easily available, but the
 BK>  "Historical Statistics of the United States Colonial Times to
 BK>  1970" gives some numbers we can run.

 BK>  The great majority of blacks in the US in 1870 lived in the
 BK>  south. The total was about 5.3 mill, and about 4.4 mill lived in
 BK>  the South. With a literacy rate of about 20.1%, (79.9%
 BK>  illiterate) that makes it about 981 thousand literate blacks in
 BK>  the US in 1870.

 BK>  The white illiteracy rate was 11.5%. With a total population of
 BK>  about 46 million, that meant about 4.9 million illiterate.

 BK>  So, we can calculate, an extremem case scenario, in favor of
 BK>  your point. If every literate black in the country lived in the
 BK>  south, that would leave about 3.9 million illiterate blacks in
 BK>  the South in 1870.

 BK>  The white population of the south was aprox 7.9 Mill.

 BK>  In order for there to be as many illiterate whites in the south
 BK>  as blacks in 1970, aproximately 80% of the illiterate whites in
 BK>  the whole country would have to have been in the South.

 BK>  If you are arguing that 80% of the illiterates in the country
 BK>  were in the South at that time, I won't argue the point.

That is exactly what I was saying. Thanks for doing the math. I can believe
that 80% of the illiterates were in the south, and I can also believe that
white share croppers had life just as bad as the average slave.
 Not saying it makes it right, and not saying it didn't happen, but not all
slave owners were not the evil task masters that beat the slaves in the
field. I believe, there were some  (again I have no numbers) that actually
looked after the slaves and treated them well.

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