Check your local community college for adult education classes. Many have basic photography classes, that include darkroom work. The nice thing is that you normally get use of the darkroom after taking the class.(posted 8675 days ago)As for a camera, yo ucan spend as little a $100 for a nice manual camera with 50mm lens. You can spend over $10,000 for a medium format system.
I would suggest a basic manual camera, bought used, to start with. It will do everything you need to learn, and in fact in many ways will be better for learning than a automatic camera. Later as you figure out more what you want and want to do, you can expand it (if you stick wiht the big brands), keep it as a backup, or sell it for about what you paid for it.
Pentax is the traditional low cost manual starter camera. Canon and Nikon also have models that will work.
And books, as already mentioned, are a good place to start. I like books by John Hedgecoe and Michael Langford. Both authors do a good job of explaining stuff for beginners, typically with lots of pictures and drawings.