Derek W. Black, "Dangerous Learning: The South's Long War on Black Literacy" (Yale UP, 2025)

New Books in African American Studies · Jan 30, 2025 · 38m

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.Dangerous Learning: The…