Hello listers, 

The following is from Tom Sticht.

Lynda Terrill
lterrill at cal.org

************************************

Celebrating Black History Month February 2006

Three Black Ladies of Adult Literacy Education In the Struggle for
Social Justice in the United States

Tom Sticht

International Consultant in Adult Education

In Black History Month we celebrate the history of African-Americans in
the United States. In this history, nothing is more important than the
struggle of slaves, freedmen, and oppressed African-Americans to learn
to read and write and to use these literacy skills to obtain their civil
rights.

In this history, three great African-American ladies stand out from
thousands of others because of the remarkable circumstances under which
they labored to help African-Americans gain the dignity and confidence
they needed to stand up for their rights. This is a brief summary of
some of the contributions of these three African-American ladies of
literacy and liberty.

Suzie (Baker) King Taylor (1848-unknown)

Susie (Baker) King Taylor was born a slave in Savannah, Georgia in 1848.

She

was raised by her grandmother who sent her and one of her brothers to
the home of a free women to learn to read and write, even though it was
against the law for slaves to learn to read and write. As she explained
in her

1902

book, "We went every day with our books wrapped in paper to prevent the
police or white persons from seeing them." (Taylor in Lerner, 1972)

During the Civil War the Union Army initiated the practice of enlisting
freed African-Americans. But it was soon apparent that there were
problems in using these men as soldiers. Among other problems, it was
difficult for officers to communicate with illiterate former slaves. So
promotion and advancement in the army was difficult for the
African-American soldiers.

Many of them blamed this situation on their lack of education. In
response to these needs, many officers initiated programs of education
for the former slaves.

One officer, Colonel Thomas W. Higginson of the 33rd U. S. Colored
Troops, appointed the chaplain as the regimental teacher. Higginson
reportedly saw men at night gathered around a campfire, "spelling slow
monosyllables out of a primer, a feat which always commands all ears, "
and he observed that,

"Their love of the spelling book is perfectly inexhaustible, -they
stumbling on by themselves, or the blind leading the blind, with the
same pathetic patience which they carry into everything. The chaplain is
getting up a schoolhouse, where he will soon teach them as regularly as
he can.

But the alphabet must always be a very incidental business in a camp."
(Cornish, 1952).

One of the people whom the chaplain engaged in teaching soldiers of the
33rd to read and write was Susie King Taylor (Blassingame, 1965). She
went with the regiment to Florida where she reported that "I learned to
handle a musket very well while in the regiment and could shoot straight
and often hit the target. I assisted in cleaning the guns and used to
fire them off, to see if the cartridges were dry, before cleaning and
re-loading , each day. I thought this was great fun." (Taylor in Lerner,
1972, p. 101).

Describing something of the conditions under which she worked, Taylor
said,

"Outside of the Fort were many skulls lying about; I have often moved
them one side out of the path.The comrades and I would have wondered a
bit as to which side of the war the men fought on, some said they were
the skulls of our boys; some said they were the enemies; but as there
was no definite way to know, it was never decided which could lay claim
to them. They were a gruesome sight, those fleshless heads and grinning
jaws, but by this time I had become used to worse things and did not
feel as I would have earlier in my camp life. -(Taylor in Lerner, 1972)

According to Taylor, "I taught a great many of the comrades in Company E
to read and write when they were off duty, nearly all were anxious to
learn.

My husband taught some also when it was convenient for him. I was very
happy to know my efforts were successful in camp also very grateful for
the appreciation of my services. I gave my services willingly for four
years and three months without receiving a dollar." (Taylor in Lerner,
1972)

Throughout the Civil War, thousands of teachers, some modestly paid and
many volunteers, worked often under very arduous conditions, such as
described above by Suzie King Taylor, to educate the newly freed slaves
who came to fight for the preservation of the United States of America.
In just the Union Army's Department of the Gulf (Louisiana, Mississippi,

Alabama,Texas) by 1864 there were 95 schools with 9,571 children and
2,000 adults being taught by 162 teachers. By the war's end it was
estimated some 20,000 African-American troops had been taught to read
"intelligently"

(Blassingame, 1965).

Harriet A. Jacobs (1813-1897)

Harriet A. Jacobs was born a slave. But even though it was unlawful to
teach slaves to read, Jacob's mistress, the daughter of her owners,
taught her to read and write. As she reached puberty, Jacob's master
started to make moves on her for sexual favors and subjected her to
other abuses. So she ran away and hid at her grandmother's house. She
hid in a garret between the ceiling and roof that was about seven feet
wide, nine feet in length and only three feet high at the highest point.
She hid there for seven years!

In 1861, Jacobs wrote a book entitled, "Incidents in the life of a slave
girl written by herself." In it she tells the story of her work to help
an older black man, a slave like her, learn to read so he could reach
for a greater reward for himself at the end of his life. In Jacob's own
words of her time:

"I knew an old black man, whose piety and childlike trust in God were
beautiful to witness. At fifty-three years old he joined the Baptist
church. He had a most earnest desire to learn to read. He thought he
should know how to serve God better if he could only read the Bible. He
came to me, and begged me to teach him. He said he could not pay me, for
he had no money; but he would bring me nice fruit when the season for it
came. I asked him if he didn't know it was contrary to law; and that
slaves were whipped and imprisoned for teaching each other to read. This
brought the tears into his eyes. "Don't be troubled, Uncle Fred," said
I. "I have no thoughts of refusing to teach you. I only told you of the
law, that you might know the danger, and be on your guard."

He thought he could plan to come three times a week without its being
suspected. I selected a quiet nook, where no intruder was likely to
penetrate, and there I taught him his A, B, C. Considering his age, his
progress was astonishing. As soon as he could spell in two syllables he
wanted to spell out words in the Bible. The happy smile that illuminated
his face put joy into my heart. After spelling out a few words he
paused, and said, "Honey, it 'pears when I can read dis good book I
shall be nearer to God. White man is got all de sense. He can larn easy.
It ain't easy for ole black man like me. I only want to read dis book,
dat I may know how to live; den I hab no fear 'bout dying."

I tried to encourage him by speaking of the rapid progress he had made.

"Hab

patience, child," he replied. "I larns slow." At the end of six months
he had read through the New Testament, and could find any text in
it.":End Quote

The Freedmen's Schools. Later in her life, after achieving her freedom,
Jacobs taught school for former slaves in what were called the
Freedmen's Schools. These schools were set up after the Civil War when
the U. S.

Congress created the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands
as the primary agency for reconstruction. This agency was placed under
the jurisdiction of the War Department and was popularly known as the
Freedmen's Bureau. The Freedmen's Bureau provided education for freed
former slaves engaging teachers who were primarily from voluntary
organizations such as the American Missionary Association. Collectively
these organizations became known as Freedmen's Aid Societies. Between

1862

and 1872, fifty-one anti-slavery societies, involving some 2,500
teachers and over 2,000 schools, were conducting education for freedmen.
The Freedmen's Bureau was disbanded in 1872 for lack of political
support (Morris, 1981).

Septima Poinsette Clark (1898-1987)

Septima Poinsette Clark has been called the "Queen Mother' of the Civil
Rights Movement in the United States. Clark taught black soldiers at
Fort Jackson in South Carolina to read and write in the 1930s. Later she
conducted workshops at the Highlander Folk school in Tennessee where one
of her students was Rosa Parks. Later Clark started citizenship schools
with Dr. Martin Luther King at the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference.

Septima Clark was an innovator in teaching adult reading and writing
within the functional context of the civil rights movement to free
African-Americans from the oppression of those wanting to deny them full
citizenship. Her methods included using "real life" materials for
teaching adults to read (Clark, 1986). On January 7, 1957, Clark and her
teachers started the first Citizenship School serving adult
African-Americans on Johns Island in South Carolina. Clark (1962)
recalled that when the teachers asked the students what they wanted to
learn, the answer was that, "First, they wanted to learn how to write
their names. That was a matter of pride as well as practical need. (p.
147).

In teaching students to write their names Clark instructed teachers to
carve student's names into cardboard. Then, according to Clark (1962),
"What the student does is trace with his pencil over and over his
signature until he gets the feel of writing his name. I suppose his
fingers memorize it by doing it over and over; he gets into the habit by
repeating the tracing time after time." (p.148). She went on to say,
"And perhaps the single greatest thing it accomplishes is the enabling
of a man to raise his head a little higher; knowing how to sign their
names, many of those men and women told me after they had learned, made
them FEEL different. Suddenly they had become a part of the community;
they were on their way toward first-class citizenship." (p. 149).

Speaking of a cleaning woman who asked to be taught to read and write in
the Citizenship School on Johns Island, South Carolina, so that she
might prepare herself to vote, Septima Poinsette Clark wrote:

"This woman is but one of those persons whose stories I could tell. One
will never be able, I maintain, to measure or even to approximate the
good that this work among the adult illiterates on this one island has
accomplished.

How can anybody estimate the worth of pride achieved, hope accomplished,
faith affirmed, citizenship won? These are intangible things but real
nevertheless, solid and of inestimable value."

Working with Dr. Martin Luther King at the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference Clark took the simple adult literacy educator's method for
teaching adults to write their names and eventually trained 10,000
teachers to teach literacy so that African-Americans could gain the
vote.

Altogether,

the Citizenship Schools got nearly 700,000 African-American adults
registered to vote in the South, providing political muscle to the Civil
Rights Movement of the 1960s!

Black History Month owes a lot of its existence to the work of these
three great Black ladies, and of course many other African-American
educators not noted here, who labored under conditions of duress to help
slaves, freedmen, and those African-Americans living under oppression in
the middle of the 20th century to acquire literacy. Armed with literacy,
African-Americans throughout the United States won the struggle for
civil rights.

But the struggle goes on. The National Assessment of Adult Literacy

(NAAL)

of 2003 showed that 67 percent of African-American adults scored at the
Basic or Below Basic literacy levels for prose tasks. But in fiscal year
2003, African-Americans made-up only 20 percent of adults enrolled in
the Adult Education and Literacy System (AELS) of the United States.
Clearly then, at the outset of the 21st century there is a continuing
need for political action to support African-American and other adult
literacy educators in their efforts to bring literacy and social justice
for all.

The work goes on; and

We SHALL overcome!

References

Blassingame, J. W. (1965). The Union Army as an educational institution
for Negroes, 1862-1865. Journal of Negro Education, 34, 152-159.

Clark, Septima P. (1962). Echo in my soul. New York: E. P. Dutton & C0.

Cornish, D. T. (1952). The Union Army as a school for Negroes. Journal
of Negro history, 37, 368-382.

Cornish, D. T. (1952). The Union Army as a school for Negroes. Journal
of Negro History, 37, 368-382.

Jacobs, H. A. (1987). Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by
herself. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Original work
published in 1861).

Lerner, G. (Ed.) (1972). Black women in white America: A documentary
history. New York: Pantheon Books-Random house.

Morris, R.C. (1981). Reading, 'Riting, and Reconstruction: The Education
of Freedmen in the South, 1861-1870. Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press.

Thomas G. Sticht

International Consultant in Adult Education

2062 Valley View Blvd.

El Cajon, CA 92019-2059

Tel/fax: (619) 444-9133

Email: tsticht at aznet.net