Overview

The enduring legacy of the nineteenth-century struggle for Black literacy in the American South Few have ever valued literacy as much as the enslaved Black people of the American South. For them, it was more than a means to a better life; it was a gateway to freedom and, in some instances, a tool for inspiring 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 southern leaders went to repress Black literacy and the extraordinary courage it took Black people 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 this legacy is resurfacing today.

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9780300272826

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Reviews

“The story of the fight for literacy of Black people in the United States is one of great hope and of profound frustration. Professor Derek Black has written a magnificent book that tells this story from the earliest days of the country through today’s continuing struggles. Black’s beautifully written book reminds us of a largely forgotten history that must be remembered and be a basis for action now.”—Erwin Chemerinsky, author of Worse Than Nothing “As Derek W. Black rightly concludes this bracing, moving history, ‘something dangerously reminiscent of the pre-Civil War South happening in education today.’ Read Dangerous Learning to grasp the heritage of the perilous path MAGA elected officials have chosen to suppress learning among those they seek to silence and dominate.”—Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America 

Author Information

Derek W. Black holds the Ernest F. Hollings Chair in Constitutional Law at the University of South Carolina Law School, where he directs the university’s Constitutional Law Center. He lives in Columbia, SC.

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