The article analyzes the possibilities, tensions and limits of schooling in the city of Rio de Janeiro, in the period during the slavery abolition and post-abolition (1888-1906). The research focuses on regions of high population density, with increasing enrollment rates in public schools. Thinking the context of post-abolition within the history of education aims to understand how national and local projects targeted at popular instruction interacted with expectations and actions of freedmen and free people in a dialogue with historiographical studies concerning the struggles of this population for educational access.
schooling; post-abolition; Rio de Janeiro