In secret places : acquiring literacy in slave communities -- A coveted possession : literacy in the first days of freedom -- The men are actually clamoring for books : African American soldiers and the educational mission -- We must get education for ourselves and our children : advocacy for education -- We are striving to do business on our own hook : organizing schools on the ground -- We are laboring under many difficulties : African American teachers in freedpeople's schools -- A long and tedious road to travel for knowledge : textbooks and freedpeople's schools -- If anybody wants an education, it is me : students in freedpeople's schools -- First movings of the waters : the creation of common school systems for Black and White students -- Epilogue -- Appendix : African Americans, literacy, and the law in the antebellum South
Summary
"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."--Jacket
Notes
Based on the author's thesis (Yale University)
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 203-285) and index
Notes
Lillian Smith Book Award, 2006
Online resource (HeinOnline, viewed September 13, 2016)
