Black educated leaders used print literacy to undercut illiterate preachers’ authority

Evidence

College-trained men and women participated in this endeavor. The Reverend Sutton Griggs, a graduate of the ABHMS’s Virginia Union University and a novelist, typified those who stressed print discourse—thus implicitly devaluing the interpretive authority of illiterate leaders. Griggs argued that published writings, not direct personal appeals, had the power to reach and influence countless people throughout the nation. He equated the spiritual and intellectual advancement of blacks as a group with the expansion of a reading public, and he maintained further that “to succeed as a race, we must move up out of the age of the voice.” — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 230

Categorization

• XREF: Reversal of the classic oral/literate valorization — here writing is wielded as a weapon of class discipline by a racial elite — echoes the colonial archive debates in Along the Archival Grain. — connects to: Educated black leaders policed a cultural divide against folk religious practice — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 226; Freed Black southerners organized their own schooling rather than defer to White missionaries — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The…, 634; Women preachers hold precarious authority lacking institutional backing (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Freed Black southerners organized their own schooling rather than defer to White missionaries #corroborates (0.75) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 634
• Women preachers hold precarious authority lacking institutional backing #exemplifies (0.72)