The Webster Blue Back Speller became a tool for enslaved people’s self-teaching.

Evidence

Papa Renty taught himself how to read, using the Webster Blue Back Speller, at a time when it was illegal for enslaved people to be literate. I’d heard this story countless times growing up and knew how important that book was for the enslaved. It was originally published in 1783 by Noah Webster Jr., who’s considered the “Father of American Scholarship and Education,” as he sought to develop a way to teach children how to read using an orderly progression of words, rules, and pronunciations. At first he was mocked for trying to reform the King’s English, but Webster traveled the country, specifically the South, circulating his speller as an inexpensive and more efficient way to teach children. This elementary approach to learning was embraced by all, including the enslaved, who seized the Webster speller as a vehicle for intellectual emancipation. — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 215

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Heather Andrea Williams’s Self-Taught and the wider literacy-as-liberation scholarship; also ties to the theme of self-teaching in abolitionist history.