Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom (The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture) - Hardcover

" It is in every respect the first definitive study of the formative stages of universal literacy and formal education among ex-slaves. Never before has anyone described so fully the broad range of roles and the significant contributions of African Americans to the development of formal and public education in the South for themselves and for the entire region. (James D. Anderson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)" "With great skill, Heather Williams demonstrates the centrality of black people to the process of formal education--the establishment of schools, the creation of a cadre of teachers, the forging of standards of literacy and numeracy--in the post-emancipation years. As she does, Williams makes the case that the issue of education informed the Reconstruction period--the two-cornered struggle between North and South over the rebuilding of Southern society, the three-cornered struggle between white Northerners, white Southerners, and black people over the nature of education, and the less well-known contest between black Northerners and black Southerners over the direction of African American culture. "Self-Taught" is a work of major significance. (Ira Berlin, University of Maryland)" "[It] is in every respect the first definitive study of the formative stages of universal literacy and formal education among ex-slaves. Never before has anyone described so fully the broad range of roles and the significant contributions of African Americans to the development of formal and public education in the South for themselves and for the entire region. (James D. Anderson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)" " [It] is in every respect the first definitive study of the formative stages of universal literacy and formal education among ex-slaves. Never before has anyone described so fully the broad range of roles and the significant contributions of African Americans to the development of formal and public education in the South for themselves and for the entire region. (James D. Anderson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)" "Makes contributions beyond the author's stated goal of documenting the agency of blacks in acquiring literacy. . . . Williams provides a useful model for how to elucidate relations of power while also explaining their significance for larger historical developments. Hopefully, her success will inspire other historians to pursue similar work." -- Florida Historical Quarterly" "Groundbreaking. . . Williams marshals enormous primary evidence to reveal a previously untold story. . . . Ultimately, a book of triumphant reading--both enslaved and freedpeople's acts of reading." -- "Southern Cultures" "Provides a needed corrective to the existing literature. . . . [A] readable and carefully researched work. . . . Represents an important expansion of knowledge about Reconstruction, the South, the political and cultural struggles of African Americans, and the nation's educational system." -- "North Carolina Historical Review" "An original, informative, and moving account. . . . [A] major corrective study of the struggle of African Americans." -- "Arkansas Historical Quarterly"

In this previously untold story of African American self-education, Heather Andrea Williams examines 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; 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.