Going Against the Grain (Part 2)

          In this section of the reading, the main idea is that people, especially African Americans, must use literacy as a mandate for action. I support that statement because I also allow literacy to encourage and empower me. Slaveholders purposely kept the slaves illiterate in order to maintain the levels of obedience. There were even laws passed prohibiting an African Americans from learning to read and write. The illiterate slaves do not know any better. Literacy would empower them and enlighten them about slavery. This was a main theme in the fight for human rights.
          "In Soldiers of Light and Love: Northern Teachers and Georgia Blacks, 1865-1873, Jacqueline Jones reports that African Americans recognized the symbolic and practical significance of literacy. After emancipation, going to school became a political act as well as a means of personal edification. Black people joined together to establish schools and hire teachers for young and old alike, and their collective efforts represented both defiance to white authority and an expression of community self-interest." This statement proves that Black people took full advantage of an education once they were given the opportunity. They mostly wanted to become literate for themselves. Literacy gave them the chance to disobey white leaders and become a black leader.
           In "The Legacies of Literacy" (1988), Harvey Graff makes two points that are central in the history of literacy for African American women. His first point is that primary users of literacy have been the state, the church, and commerce, institutions that by his reckoning have held political and cultural hegemony over the functions of literacy. Whatever women wanted to do involving literacy would be perceived by these hegemonic structures as going against the grain. Literacy did not come easy at all for black women. His second point is that reading was spread to many "illiterates" and "semi literates" through oral activities, which indicates that reading was then a collective process, as opposed to the private, silent reading process we now think it to be. The oral dimensions of literacy development deserve much more attention, especially in the black community, in which oral traditions are richly constructed.