Katie Raney

Literacy as a Communal Experience and a Way to Cope in the Dystopian Antebellum South

While conducting research for my first research post discussing the repression of literacy within dystopias, I came across a book stating how many youths within Stalin’s Soviet Union would turn to the writings of Mark Twain as a way to escape the dysfunctional society that they inhabited. Through Twain’s writings, it was suggested that the children could retreat to a world in which adolescent characters fled the dysfunctional world that the adults had created, and they were free to become strong, inspirational leaders. This source, combined with a suggestion from a classmate made me want to examine how literacy may be used within dystopias as a coping mechanism or a way to escape mentally from the oppression they were facing. Often, reading or journaling is something that becomes largely an individual experience where one is left alone to connect with the author, which is a supposition that I held before researching. To examine these issues I wanted to select a central area to help me focus my research, and I decided to examine literacy within the African-American slavery culture.  The overall questions that I desired to answer were, “Did African-American slaves use literacy as a way to mentally and individually retreat from their surroundings?” and “Was literacy used as a primary way to cope with the severe oppression that they were experiencing?”

Interestingly, after reading several sources, it seems that for the African-American slaves, the individual mental escape one usually experiences through reading was not as critical of a part of their experience as I originally thought that it would be. If anything, literacy became utilized as a way to connect with others – not withdraw from their community. Through literacy, the slaves were able to “[use] the pen and their education as tools of empowerment and resistance” using literacy as a way “to tell their story” revealing “American trickery and terrorism to the world” for the first time (Harrison 215). This idea of sharing their story with the world was something that Frederick Douglass understood knowing “that literacy [would] do more than physically liberate him-it [would] also integrate him into a human community” (Royer 369). Though literacy can be a painful, alienating experience, which Douglass also faces, at its heart, it empowered the slaves to connect with and expose the white world around for the first time. Telling the world there story was one of the main drives for their aspiration to become literate.

Previously in America, “when the black presence in the colonial South was represented at all, a portion was always missing” (Bontemps 16). Due to the repression of literacy, African-Americans were unable to tell their own story in their own way. This is something that Bontemps makes clear as he goes on to examine several of the founding fathers and their own views of African-Americans. This source was especially interesting as Bontemps traces several journal entries and direct quotes from the founding fathers illustrating how they felt about African-Americans. For example, Washington once recorded that “Blacks are capable of much labor but having (I am speaking generally) no ambition to establish a good name, they are too regardless of a bad one.”  He even goes on to ask if “the mind of a slave” is even capable of being educated “to perceive … the obligations of freedom” (Bontemps 16). Disturbing remarks like this, demonstrate how unfortunate it is that they were the primary writers of history during this time period, making the African-Americans look less valuable than they truly were. However, with the rise of literacy in slaves, the African-Americans were capable to tell the world their story. Many wanted to attain literacy to “[tell] the story never before told or [correct] the story as previously told” (Mitchell 147).This idea of “telling their story” becomes central to the idea that literacy is very much a group experience for them – not just an individual one.

In addition to telling their story, the role of reading and writing is also communal because it was essential for the sufferers of slavery to tell their story in order to find healing from it.  Mitchell explains that “telling one’s story becomes the only way to live” (Mitchell 148). Quoting another critic, Mitchell writes that “there is, in each survivor, an imperative need to tell and thus come to know one’s story, unimpeded by ghosts from the past” (148). However, a key to this process is having a reader who is able to “serve as a witness” (148). The need for a reader within the African-American slave narrative demonstrates that the writings are, in fact, communal. This reminded me of our writings within Anthem when the author is writing his experiences in his journal.  I cannot help but wonder who he felt his audience was.  I think he was hoping to use his journal for others to find and either use it as a way to freedom or use it to show the power of becoming an individual.

Furthermore, literacy in the antebellum period was a communal experience because one of the central focuses that the African-Americans developed was the idea of becoming literate to help others attain literacy.  This in of itself shows the desire to that they had to use literacy to connect with others. Many “sought to educate themselves for the sole purpose of educating and empowering others” (Harrison 214). As more blacks became educated, more people would “possess the power to tell their stories on their own terms and articulate a positive black identity while fighting for social, political, and economic equality” (Harrison 214). In fact, several slave narratives were “most often written to aid the cause of abolition,” demonstrating how the slaves began reading and writing to attain freedom and then to aid others in the same cause (Mitchell 8).

In addition to discovering how literacy was a communal experience, I also found how vital literacy was for freedom. Several sources confirmed that not only was literacy used as a way to cope with their slavery, but it was seen as a direct way to freedom. According to Bontemps, “it would have been extremely difficult for any person of African origin in the colonial South not to have made the connection between literacy and freedom” (Bontemps 176-177). The acknowledgement of this fact between slave holders was seen through the fact that “Anti-literacy laws were passed only when whites in the South came to fear a slave rebellion. The danger was that slaves who could read and write might print pamphlets and posters calling for insurrection” (Review: The Literacy Dilemma of the Slave owners of the South 132). Undoubtedly, literacy was used to cope because it provided the hope of a physical freedom.

 After researching this issue, my second question in my introduction was easily answered as it is apparent that literacy was a vital way that slaves could cope with their oppression in the antebellum south as it provided hope for a better life. Though that question was easily answered, my first question in which I wondered about the idea of the slaves using literacy as a mental and individual escape turned out a little differently than I thought it would. It seems that though literacy does have strong individual effects, it also proves to be highly communal. After reading dystopias where literacy seemed a way for the characters to withdraw from society, I assumed slavery would prove no exception. However, for the slaves, literacy proved to be a very communal experience – not just an individual one. Due to the fact of wanting to share their story and empower others through literacy, the communal nature of literacy was pivotal.  After seeing this, it is easy to see how even in the literature that we have been reading, literacy can be a communal experience, as well.  In Anthem, Equality desires to use literacy to tell his story to others and to create a new community with the Golden One. In 1984, Winston begins his journey individually through the pages of his journal, but he begins sharing that with his girlfriend, Julia. These seem to reinforce the idea that though literacy may be individualistic, it has deep communal roots as well, which is something that I would like to investigate further in dystopia literacy. It would be interesting to examine how it is individual and how it is communal further, as this was a shorter look at this issue. In regard to my sources, I did not find any that stood out to me as much as in my first research posting; however, they all proved useful in evaluating the impact of literacy in the antebellum South. Overall, literacy did so much more than just provide a mental escape for the slaves; it was used to help them have physical escapes and connect communally with others for healing and for their cause.

Works Cited

Bontemps, Alex. The Punished Self: Surviving Slavery in the Colonial South. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2001. Print.

Harrison, Renee K. Enslaved Women and the Art of Resistance in Antebellum America. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009. Print.

Mitchell, Angelyn. The Freedom to Remember: Narrative, Slavery, and Gender in Contemporary Black Women's Fiction. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2002. Print.

"Review: The Literacy Dilemma of the Slaveowners of the South." The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, 25.Autumn (1999): 132. JSTOR. Web. 2 July 2011. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/2999413 .>.

Royer, Daniel J. "The Process of Literacy as Communal Involvement in the Narratives of Frederick Douglass." African American Review, Autumn 28.3 (1994): 363-74. JSTOR. Web. 2 July 2011. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/3041973 .>.