The document discusses several important early efforts to educate African Americans after slavery. It describes how the Freedmen's Bureau set up 4,000 schools and educated 250,000 African Americans after the Civil War. It also discusses Mary Smith Peake who secretly taught slaves and established the first classes under the Emancipation Oak tree. Additionally, it mentions the Negro School in Charleston, SC founded in 1743 to educate free blacks and slaves, as well as Prudence Crandall who opened the first integrated classroom in the U.S. in 1833.