The enduring legacy of the nineteenth-century struggle for Black literacy in the American South

Few populations have ever valued literacy as much as the enslaved Black people of the American South. To them, it was more than a means to a better life; it was a gateway to freedom and, in some instances, a tool for revolt. And few governments tried harder to suppress literacy than did those in the South. Everyone understood that knowledge was power: power to keep a person enslaved in mind and body, power to resist oppression. In the decades before the Civil War, Southern governments drove Black literacy underground, but it was too precious to be entirely stamped out.

This book describes the violent lengths to which white slaveholders and governments went to repress Black literacy and the extraordinary courage it took to resist. Derek W. Black shows how, from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the end of Reconstruction, literacy evolved from a subversive gateway to freedom to a public program to extend citizenship and build democratic institutions-and how, once Reconstruction was abandoned, opposition to educating Black children depressed education throughout the South for Black and white students alike. He also reveals the deep imprint those events had on education and how their legacy is resurfacing today.