A presença de negros em espaços de instrução elementar da cidade-corte: o caso da Escola da Imperial Quinta da Boa Vista

Abstract

This study has as main objective to investigate the presence of blacks in the Imperial School of Quinta da Boa Vista. This institution created and maintained by the Emperor d. Pedro II, initially designated to serve the children of the employees of the Imperial House and the Imperial Farm dwellers. To this end, we seek to prioritize the query to the primary sources, located in the Museum's collections, library and national archives, General Archives of the city of Rio de Janeiro and the Imperial Museum. The interpretation produced in relation to the field of letters by individuals "of color" reveals that, despite the barriers imposed, mainly symbolic, that established for this portion of the population practice limitations in many social contexts, such as the school, blacks (including in the condition of slaves) have learned to read and write in different spaces. Finding that opposes to the traditionally educational historiography asserted that, during the period marked by slavery, these subjects were on the fringes of the literate world, denying even the prospect of use of reading and writing skills by these social actors in their daily lives, as a possible strategy of distancing and overcoming the captive condition