“One day I went to see, in the forest, some of the poor people . . . who live in the woods, without churches, without schools, without hearths, and sometimes, also, without homes, but yet independent and proud in their own way. . . . [They] are commonly as immoral as they are ignorant; for as by the law of the States it is forbidden to teach the negro slaves to read and write, and in consequence there would be no support for schools, where half the population consists of slaves, and the country in consequence is thinly inhabited; therefore the indigent white people in the country villages are without schools, and very nearly without any instruction at all. . . .

Question

Mr. Gr. and his family were a good specimen of this class of people. They lived in the depths of a wood quite away from any road. . . . Deep in the wood we found a newly-built shed, which had been roofed in for the poor family by some benevolent persons. Here lived the husband and wife, with five or six children. They had a roof over their heads, but that was all; I saw no kind of furniture whatever, not even a fire-place, and door there was none. But Mr. Gr., an affable little man of about fifty, seemed delighted with his world, with himself, his children, and in particular with his wife. . . .”

—Fredrika Bremer

Why were poor white families living in the South without access to a proper education?

Group of answer choices

They were not allowed to go to school based on the laws passed by the Southern governments

They chose to farm instead or take up apprenticeships with people living in the North

It made it harder for them to attend schools because enslaved people were not permitted to be educated and there were too few poor whites to support schools.

Answer 1

The correct answer is:

It made it harder for them to attend schools because enslaved people were not permitted to be educated and there were too few poor whites to support schools.

This reflects the situation described in the passage, where the lack of educational opportunities for poor white families in the South was largely a consequence of laws forbidding the education of enslaved people, which in turn affected the availability of schools for the white population as well.