Gilberto Freyre (1900-1987) was one of the most important Brazilian social thinkers, whose legacy has been constantly revisited. In this paper I turn to a relatively unexplored aspect of his work that concerns the relationship between education and race. I point in this text beyond the ‘myth of racial democracy’ Freyre recognizes the existing barriers and inequalities in Brazilian society, so much that even states that diplomas become true ‘letters of sociological whiteness”’ recognizing not only the deep social differences existing between whites, blacks and mulattos in Brazil, as well as drawing attention to the dynamics created with the gradual process of schooling. I analyze how the work of Freyre presents this relationship between social mobility of blacks and mulattos and education, which I do using as substrate mainly the authors who have produced knowledge in the field of Brazilian social thought.