Exploring Literacy

“(…)African American women have built a tradition of literacy and action and have established a place for themselves as users of the word, as “dark spinners of word magic”-Royster

Being a black person made being literate difficult but then adding the word “woman” to that confounded the degree of difficulty by a lot. Whether you became literate or not had a lot to do with what circumstances you were coming from. The wealthier you were, the higher the chances were that you learned to read and write. African American people made up the lower class and therefore were most frequently the ones considered “illiterate” simply because they did not have access. The reason for the literate’s ability to read and write came from schooling through the church. The story of Maria Stewart, the first African American woman to have written essays, helps illustrate this point. The man that she was indentured to for years was a clergyman and she learned to read and write from Sabbath schools. Her story is one of empowerment and inspiration. Although Stewart grew up without the access to schooling, she knew that it was important to acquire the skills in order to make her voice heard. She knew that she would need to be literate. The time period was one of newly-opened minds and mouths and she had access to that, being married into the "middle class". Black people had their own newspapers, like Freedom's Journal, and people could write and have their material published and seen by the multitudes for the first time ever. As Freedom of Speech was being asserted, so was literacy and Stewart made sure she was a part of that. I see this as a lesson in courage. Although she had the odds stacked against her from the beginning, Stewart jumped onto the literary scene and made the voice of the Black woman heard. If we want to see change in our environments, then we must EFFECT change.
-Olivia LaFlamme