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Dangerous Learning

The South's Long War on Black Literacy
By Derek W Black
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Brief Description
The enduring legacy of the nineteenth-century struggle for Black literacy in the American South Few have ever valued literacy as much as the enslaved Black people of the American South. For them, it was more than a means to a better life; it was a gateway... Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
$4799
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The enduring legacy of the nineteenth-century struggle for Black literacy in the American South

Few have ever valued literacy as much as the enslaved Black people of the American South. For them, it was more than a means to a better life; it was a gateway to freedom and, in some instances, a tool for inspiring revolt. And few governments tried harder to suppress literacy than did those in the South. Everyone understood that knowledge was power: power to keep a person enslaved in mind and body, power to resist oppression. In the decades before the Civil War, Southern governments drove Black literacy underground, but it was too precious to be entirely stamped out.

Dangerous Learning describes the violent lengths to which southern leaders went to repress Black literacy and the extraordinary courage it took Black people to resist. Derek W. Black shows how, from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the end of Reconstruction, literacy evolved from a subversive gateway to freedom to a public program to extend citizenship and build democratic institutions—and how, once Reconstruction was abandoned, opposition to educating Black children depressed education throughout the South for Black and white students alike. He also reveals the deep imprint those events had on education and how this legacy is resurfacing today.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780300292084

Publisher: Yale University Press

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 28 July 2026

Country: United States

Imprint: Yale University Press

Illustration: 34 b-w illus.

Audience: Professional and scholarly

DIMENSIONS

Width: 156.0mm

Height: 235.0mm

Weight: 300g

Pages: 360

Collections

Derek W Black Education & Reference History & Archaeology History & Military Non-Fiction Politics & Current Affairs

About the Author

Derek W. Black holds the Ernest F. Hollings Chair in Constitutional Law at the University of South Carolina Law School, where he directs the university’s Constitutional Law Center. He lives in Columbia, SC.

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