Literacy

1- “The first step in her downward course was in her ceasing to instruct me. She now commenced to practise her husband's precepts...Nothing seemed to make her angrier than to see me with a newspaper. She seemed to think that here lay the danger. I have had her rush at me with a face made all up of fury, and snatch from me a newspaper, in a manner that fully revealed her apprehension. She was an apt woman; and a little experience soon demonstrated, to her satisfaction, that education and slavery were incompatible with each other.” (31)

2 - “I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty- to wit, the white man’s power to enslave the black man. It was a grand achievement, and I prized it highly. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom.” (29)

3 - “As I read and contemplated the subject, behold! that very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish. As I writhed under it, I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out. In moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity.” (33)

4 - “The paper became my meat and my drink. My soul was set on fire. Its sympathy for my brethren in bonds-its scathing denunciations of slaveholders-Its faithful exposures of slavery-and its powerful attacks upon the upholders of the institution-sent a thrill of joy through my soul, such as I had never felt before.” (74)

5 - “Ones thirst for knowledge must have an indestructible drive that not even a higher power can rupture.”

6-.   

7-“These were choice documents to me. I read them over and over again with unabated interest. They gave tongue to interesting thoughts of my own soul, which had frequently flashed through my mind, and died away for want of utterance. The moral which I gained from the dialogue was the power of truth over the conscience of even a slaveholder.” (39).

8 - Literacy plays a role in how one perceives and contributes to society, through this we can better understand and articulate our own individual beliefs, as well as begin to interpret opposing views.  

9 - In our world, the self is of vital importance. If you lose yourself, you have nothing. And if you have nothing, you can be controlled.   

10 - Coded slave songs  (One of the ways slaves regained control over themselves was through coded song, expressing views on religion etc.)  

11- “While I lived with my master in St. Michael’s, there was a white young man, a Mr. Wilson, who proposed to keep a Sabbath school for the instruction of such slaves as might be disposed to learn to read the New Testament. We met but three times, when Mr. West and Mr. Fairbanks, both class-leaders, with many others, came upon with us with sticks and other missiles, drove us off, and forbade us to meet again. Thus ended our little Sabbath school in the pious town of St. Michael’s.” (41)

12- Controlling and limiting an education is the most extreme form of slavery; owning someone’s mind means owning their person.

13 - “Burgeoning literacy in the freed people’s schools provided unavoidable evidence of the inadmissible possibility of black intellectual capacity and of the unimaginable potential that blacks could not merely survive, but could even thrive, without white oversight.” (175)

14 - “For the freed people, Bible literacy was not simply an end in itself, nor merely an expression of black piety . It was, rather, a means to a symbolic end. To be able to read the Bible for oneself was to declare one’s emancipation from white churches and from decades-centuries-of being told by white preachers what to believe. It was another aspect of the impulse that led southern blacks to abandon en masse the southern white churches they had attended all their lives in favor of black denominations: it was religions emancipation.” (10- Schooling the Freed People)

15- How I will read the Bible will be different from everyone else because I am a different person. Therefore, my relationship with God will be different. However, that is my relationship with God. Not anyone else’s.  Within that relationship, and in no one else’s, can I find freedom.  

16 - “Literacy as a means to read the Bible was often linked explicitly in the freed people’s mind with other, more specifically political, ends. Southern African Americans knew there was much more at stake than access to sacred text. Literacy had political meaning for the freed people.”  (pg 10- Schooling the Freed People)

17 - We need a system that not only teaches us, shoving knowledge in our heads like machines, but loves and respects us, treating us like the diverse human beings we are.  

18 - Def poetry - I can't read

Group 12 Artist Statement

In Frederick Douglass’s slave narrative, he describes how the ability to read and write essentially bought him his freedom, and brought him out of a “mental darkness” the white oppressors used to continue the cycle of slavery. For our mash up project, we chose to examine the term “literacy” as discussed by Frederick Douglass (as a ticket to personal freedom and power), but we also explore how it relates to religious freedom, and how the problem of illiteracy has changed (or not changed) in the modern world.

We ordered our quotes and pieces of art loosely chronologically to communicate an evolution of literacy across history. We began with quotes from Douglass looking at literacy in a broad sense, the effect it had on his soul and sense of self, and how it gave him skills beyond just reading and writing. Then we transitioned into a video clip about slave songs to question the definition of literacy itself. Learning to sing and understand the meaning of the slave songs is also a form of literacy, and one that brought many slaves to freedom through the Underground Railroad.

We then move on to discuss literacy as it pertains to religion, through Douglass’s accounts of religious freedom, and through quotes from a book written about black schools after the abolition of slavery. We use these to discuss how understanding the Bible could lead to not only personal freedom, but political and social freedom. Then we finished by looking at modern illiteracy and the problems with the education system through a performance of a slam poem.

Our project goes beyond just looking at just the power or the ability to read and write; it goes deeper into the meaning of “literacy,” and the effects literacy has across time.

Attribution List

1.)    The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

2.)    The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

3.)    The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

4.)    The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

5.)    Colin’s personal quote

6.)    Clarion journal of spirituality and justice

7.)    The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

8.)    Madison’s personal quote

9.)    Layne’s personal quote

10.)  JonesKnowledge channel, youtube.com

11.)  The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

12.)  Anne’s personal quote

13.)  Schooling the Freed Black People

14.) Schooling the Freed Black People

15.)  Breanna’s personal quote

16.)  Schooling the Freed Black People

17.)  Layne’s personal quote

18.)  Lamont Carey on HBO's Def Jam Poetry