Ninety-five percent of southern blacks were illiterate at the Civil War’s outbreak

Evidence

Anna J. Cooper, Voice from the South (1892) … The convention movement in the black Baptist church was led by a race-conscious vanguard imbued with the class values of Victorian America. In the decades following Reconstruction, the movement expanded its ranks with growing numbers of educated men and women, the majority of whom had been trained in southern black schools and colleges. There was little doubt in their minds that education stood second only to religion in enabling their survival and salvation in America. The evidence of education’s value appeared irrefutable to men and women denied legal access to learning under the slave regime. With 95 percent of southern blacks unable to read or write at the outbreak of the Civil War, illiteracy proved a bitter fruit of bondage. African Americans were quick to identify literacy with personal fulfillment and upward mobility. The testimony of exslaves repeatedly noted how significant it was to read the Bible, write one’s name, compute one’s earnings, and teach others to do the same. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 117

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Black southerners were left largely illiterate while white schools flourished — Marcy Crouch, Magnet Schools and Other Means of…, 4

Broader Connections

• Black southerners were left largely illiterate while white schools flourished #expands (0.82) — Marcy Crouch, Magnet Schools and Other Means of…, 4