The Emergence of African American Literacy Traditions
The Emergence of African American Literacy Traditions

Author: Phyllis M. Belt-Beyan

Publisher: Praeger

Published: 2004-10-30

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13:

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The ways in which the African American community learned to be proficient readers and writers during the 19th century were diverse, however, the greatest impact on literacy acquisition came from family and community efforts. African American arts, churches, benevolent societies, newspapers, literacy societies, and formal and informal schools supported literacy growth, and literacy growth in turn gave rise to national and international African American literacy traditions. The underlying motivations that gave shape to the nature of their literacy behaviors and events within family and community contexts and within national and global context are examined in detail here. The beginnings of African American literacy traditions would have failed had there not been intrinsic motivations, opportunities, and a need to use all of the language arts, reading, writing, speaking, listening, and viewing to maintain and protect what mattered most to them as a people. The institutionalization of these traditions into family and community rituals, including songs, prayers, letters, story telling, and the like gave a visibility to the African American in ways no other cultural knowledge could. Belt-Beyan traces the development of these literacy traditions, noting the parallel progression and transformation of Africans into African Americans, slaves into freepersons, and noncitizens into citizens.

Self-Taught
Self-Taught

Author: Heather Andrea Williams

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2009-11-20

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0807888974

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In this previously untold story of African American self-education, Heather Andrea Williams moves across time to examine 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, and 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.

A Community Text Arises
A Community Text Arises

Author: Beverly J. Moss

Publisher: Hampton Press (NJ)

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13:

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A Community Text Arises emerges from an ethnographic study of literacy in three African-American churches. These data illuminate the ways that the primary model of a literate text is shaped and used in African-American churches. Chapter 1 examines how the African-American church has operated as a community within the larger African-American communities. Chapter 2 introduces, through ethnographic descriptions, the churches that the authors studies and Chapter 3 highlights the features of the major literacy event and text in African-American churches - the sermon. Through close analysis of individual sermons the author illustrates how the sermon functions as a community text. Chapter 4 focuses solely on the sermons of one minister to highlight rhetorical strategies that are used to create and main community identity. The analysis in chapters 3 and 4 provides a view of a text that calls into question traditionally held notions of text inside and outside the community. Therefore, chapter 5 deals with the implications of this study for how text is defined and the relation between oral and written texts.

Forgotten Readers
Forgotten Readers

Author: Elizabeth McHenry

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2002-10-31

Total Pages: 444

ISBN-13: 9780822329954

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DIVRecovers the history of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century African American reading societies./div

Traces Of A Stream
Traces Of A Stream

Author: Jacqueline Jones Royster

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre

Published: 2000-04-15

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 9780822972112

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Traces of a Stream offers a unique scholarly perspective that merges interests in rhetorical and literacy studies, United States social and political theory, and African American women writers. Focusing on elite nineteenth-century African American women who formed a new class of women well positioned to use language with consequence, Royster uses interdisciplinary perspectives (literature, history, feminist studies, African American studies, psychology, art, sociology, economics) to present a well-textured rhetorical analysis of the literate practices of these women. With a shift in educational opportunity after the Civil War, African American women gained access to higher education and received formal training in rhetoric and writing. By the end of the nineteenth-century, significant numbers of African American women operated actively in many public arenas. In her study, Royster acknowledges the persistence of disempowering forces in the lives of African American women and their equal perseverance against these forces. Amid these conditions, Royster views the acquisition of literacy as a dynamic moment for African American women, not only in terms of their use of written language to satisfy their general needs for agency and authority, but also to fulfill socio-political purposes as well. Traces of a Stream is a showcase for nineteenth-century African American women, and particularly elite women, as a group of writers who are currently underrepresented in rhetorical scholarship. Royster has formulated both an analytical theory and an ideological perspective that are useful in gaining a more generative understanding of literate practices as a whole and the practices of African American women in particular. Royster tells a tale of rhetorical prowess, calling for alternative ways of seeing, reading, and rendering scholarship as she seeks to establish a more suitable place for the contributions and achievements of African American women writers.

Race and Schooling in the South, 1880-1950
Race and Schooling in the South, 1880-1950

Author: Robert A. Margo

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2007-12-01

Total Pages: 175

ISBN-13: 0226505014

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The interrelation among race, schooling, and labor market opportunities of American blacks can help us make sense of the relatively poor economic status of blacks in contemporary society. The role of these factors in slavery and the economic consequences for blacks has received much attention, but the post-slave experience of blacks in the American economy has been less studied. To deepen our understanding of that experience, Robert A. Margo mines a wealth of newly available census data and school district records. By analyzing evidence concerning occupational discrimination, educational expenditures, taxation, and teachers' salaries, he clarifies the costs for blacks of post-slave segregation. "A concise, lucid account of the bases of racial inequality in the South between Reconstruction and the Civil Rights era. . . . Deserves the careful attention of anyone concerned with historical and contemporary race stratification."—Kathryn M. Neckerman, Contemporary Sociology "Margo has produced an excellent study, which can serve as a model for aspiring cliometricians. To describe it as 'required reading' would fail to indicate just how important, indeed indispensable, the book will be to scholars interested in racial economic differences, past or present."—Robert Higgs, Journal of Economic Literature "Margo shows that history is important in understanding present domestic problems; his study has significant implications for understanding post-1950s black economic development."—Joe M. Richardson, Journal of American History

Literacy in African American Communities
Literacy in African American Communities

Author: Joyce L. Harris

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-04-08

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 1135664749

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Explores developmental and adult literacy in African American communities from cross-disciplinary vantage points; focuses on influences of cultural socialization and literacy values and practices among many African Americans.

The Land Shall be Deluged in Blood
The Land Shall be Deluged in Blood

Author: Patrick H. Breen

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 0199828008

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Signs -- The first blood -- To Jerusalem -- Where are the facts? -- The coolest and most judicious among us -- Long and elaborate arguments -- Willing to suffer the fate that awaits me -- Communion

Change Is Gonna Come
Change Is Gonna Come

Author: Patricia A. Edwards

Publisher: Teachers College Press

Published: 2015-04-17

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0807770663

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While many books decry the crisis in the schooling of African American children, they are often disconnected from the lived experiences and work of classroom teachers and principals. In this book, the authors look back to move forward, providing specific practices that K–12 literacy educators can use to transform their schools. The text addresses four major debates: the fight for access to literacy; supports and roadblocks to success; best practices, theories, and perspectives on teaching African American students; and the role of African American families in the literacy lives of their children. Throughout, the authors highlight the valuable lessons learned from the past and include real stories from their own diverse family histories and experiences as teachers, parents, and community members.