| 19th Century |
| Education |
| United States |
| American - African American & Black Studies |
| History |
| Social Science |
| Ethnic Studies |
Summary
Summary
In this previously untold story of African American self-education, Heather Andrea Williams moves across time to examine African Americans' relationship to literacy during slavery, during the Civil War, and in the first decades of freedom. Self-Taught traces the historical antecedents to freedpeople's intense desire to become literate and demonstrates how the visions of enslaved African Americans emerged into plans and action once slavery ended.
Enslaved people, Williams contends, placed great value in the practical power of literacy, whether it was to enable them to read the Bible for themselves or to keep informed of the abolition movement and later the progress of the Civil War. Some slaves devised creative and subversive means to acquire literacy, and when slavery ended, they became the first teachers of other freedpeople. Soon overwhelmed by the demands for education, they called on northern missionaries to come to their aid. Williams argues that by teaching, building schools, supporting teachers, resisting violence, and claiming education as a civil right, African Americans transformed the face of education in the South to the great benefit of both black and white southerners.
Reviews (1)
Choice Review
At a time when culture wars seem to be more commonplace that one might like, this book is a timely reminder that African Americans' struggle for education was not an easy one, nor was the ultimate success in creating a system of public education for all automatic. Tracing the quest for African American education to the slave quarters, Williams (Univ. of North Carolina) draws on the records of the Freedmen's Bureau, the American Missionary Association, and others to document its continuation through the war years and into the post-Civil War US. She examines the political context, the nature of teaching, texts, physical facilities, and students. Central to her argument is that the educational attainment of African Americans was largely generated from within the African American community, and in spite of resistance from would-be social regulators and often-hostile public officials frequently oblivious to the need for basic education for either blacks or whites. The author effectively mixes local vignettes with discussions of state and regional trends. Her book draws heavily on a wide range of primary sources and a well-rounded mix of secondary materials. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. T. F. Armstrong Louisiana State University at Alexandria
