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Highlighting a History of Literacy for the African Diaspora in the West at Wilson Special Collections Library

Historically, in places like the United States, literacy has been lawfully and socially restricted as a race-based entitlement. Written language and print culture were used in the institutionalization of European law throughout early colonial settlement territories. From the earliest days of European colonization and trans-Atlantic slavery, most enslaved Africans trafficked into the western diaspora and their descendants were intentionally kept illiterate.

During the 19th century, anti-literacy laws for enslaved people became increasingly codified and enforced in the American South in response to a fear of the social consequences of global abolitionist movements like the Haitian Revolution. Even today, decades after the Supreme Court ruling on Brown vs. the Board of Education, segregation in the American education system remains prevalent as a systemic barrier to broader tools of information literacy for the descendants of enslaved Africans.

Within Wilson Special Collections Library there are historically significant print artifacts that evidence the African diaspora’s resistance to institutionalized exclusion from the Eurocentric print culture. In honor of Black History Month, we are showcasing primary sources selected from the Rare Book Collection and the North Carolina Collection that demonstrate almost three hundred years of the history of literacy for the African diaspora in the West.

Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral

 

Phillis Wheatley, the first African American and the second woman to publish in the United States, created this work and in doing so overcame the restrictive social taboos around the literacy of enslaved persons; while not explicitly outlawed, literacy among enslaved persons in late eighteenth century Boston was unconventional. This 1773 edition of her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral is held in the Rare Book Collection. Here, the object provides a dedication; a preface; a letter by John Wheatley, who enslaved her; a portrait of the author; and a poem showcasing her unusual literacy and command of the English language.

The Laws of North Carolina

Cases like Wheatly’s that evidence a history of Black literacy in the early-colonial period were anomalous. Wilson Library’s North Carolina Collection holds an 1831 edition of the Laws of North Carolina that showcases how the law was used as a tool to formally forbid the teaching of literacy to enslaved people. This object demonstrates that the right to literacy in the language of the law, indeed the very same body of law that legitimized enslavement, became a legal entitlement reserved only to those who were also afforded the legal status of whiteness.

Notably, even though formal and informal instruction of enslaved persons in literacy was outlawed in the nineteenth century, this North Carolina law shows that people who were enslaved recognized literacy as tool for claiming rights. Some used their literacy practically to communicate while navigating abolitionist communication networks like the Underground Railroad to emancipate themselves. More broadly, race-based restrictions on literacy like this North Carolina law became increasingly codified throughout the nineteenth century as lawful enslavers became fearful of retribution from enslaved peoples following the historically unprecedented success of the Haitian Revolution.

My Bondage and my Freedom

My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass is another primary source from the Rare Book Collection that is useful for gaining insights into the history of Black literacy in the West. He escaped slavery in Maryland and went on to become an author and leader in the abolitionist movement between Massachusetts and New York, becoming one of the most famous American figures during the 19th century. This 1855 edition includes a portrait of the author. In this selection of the text, Douglass remarks on experiences he lived as an enslaved person, “A knowledge of my ability to read and write, got pretty widely spread, which was very much against me.” He notes increased ostracization from enslavers as a social consequence of his ability to inspire discontent with the conditions of lawful slavery among other members of the African diaspora.

Scottsboro Limited: Four Poems and a Play in Verse

Our narrative of the history of Black literacy continues with Scottsboro Limited: Four Poems and a Play in Verse by Langston Hughes. Increased rates of literacy coincided the explosion of Black print culture that occurred in the decades following the American Civil War and the formal abolition of American slavery. The Harlem Renaissance, a cultural and intellectual revival of African American performing arts and scholarship in New York City across the 1920’s and 1930’s, was the result of increasing Black literacy. Langston Hughes, a leading figure of the movement, and here, we showcase a compilation of his works published by the Golden Stair Press into an ephemeral object. The Golden Stair Press, “was born of Langston Hughes’s desire to publish and distribute inexpensive pamphlets of poetry for African American men, women, and children- affordable literature that would be accessible in both form and content.” (Quinn, page 17). This copy includes a signature by the author and a list of other works by Hughes on the back cover.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

The Autobiography of Malcolm X is another primary source for showcasing the history of literacy for the African diaspora in the West. Prior to his assassination, Malcolm X dedicated his life to advocacy for restorative justice and economic reparations for slavery in Black communities around the globe. The Rare Book Collection holds two copies that are shown here. Notably, the first copy displayed is a spiral-bound uncorrected proof complete with manuscript corrections throughout. The second copy on display is a published version from 1965 that includes an authorial portrait on the dustjacket and several photographs.

Lift Every Voice and Sing

The final object in this exhibition is a collection of songs gaining its title from the black national anthem, Lift Every Voice and Sing. The NAACP declared this song the Black national anthem in 1919. Twelve years later, President Herbert Hoover would declare the “Star-Spangled Banner” as the national anthem of the federal government. Here, the song is denoted as the “negro” national anthem. It is often interpreted as a song about collective hope for equality and restorative justice. In contrast, the “Star-Spangled Banner” is still the national anthem today, the third verse of which is written as,

“No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

Banned Books Week Showcase at Wilson Library

Banned Books Week is an annual event that encourages information-seeking patrons to embrace and celebrate the freedom to read. Initially, Banned Books Week was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden increase in the number of challenges to books in typical reading spaces like schools, bookstores and libraries. Banned Books week celebrates and upholds the value of free and open access to information by bringing together the entire book community—including librarians, booksellers, publishers, journalists, teachers, and readers of all types—in shared affirmation of the freedom to seek and to express ideas, including those ideas that some consider relatively unorthodox and unpopular. In Wilson Special Collections Library there are materials that reveal insights into the history of the book and the history of reading, as well as insights into how censorship intersects with historical social injustices and epistemic oppression. Our selections below illustrate a timeline of the history of censorship.

Index Librorum Prohibitorum

An engraved frontisepiece for the 1758 edition of the Index librorum prohibitorum with several people throwing books into a fire

The history of censorship in Western Civilization is older than the printing press itself. The Catholic Church censored readings as early as 496. A.D. Censorship practices included book burning, book banning, publication restrictions and conditional censorship, imprisonment, torture, and execution. These practices carried the force of law in some territories well into the 19th century. Wilson Library’s Rare Book Collection holds a 1758 edition of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum that includes an engraved plate depicting a book burning. The Index Librorum Prohibitorum was never meant to be a complete catalogue of forbidden books, but rather a guideline for Catholic priests around the world to make determinations of censorship for their own localities.

An exact reprint of the Roman Index Expurgatorius

Title page of Roman Index Expurgatorius

Conditional censorship and publication restrictions are just two examples of the practical means by which the Church censored reading in the West. The Roman Index Expurgatorius is similar to the Index Librorum Prohibitorum; however, it also includes a catalogue of books that were banned in totality. It provides comments and annotations on the works of specific authors and bans the works unless the author removes the expurgated material prior to authorized publication. The Rare Book Collection holds a facsimile edition of the 1608 Roman Index Expurgatorius printed in 1837.

Registrum huius operis libri cronicarum cum figuris et ymagibus ab inicio mundi, or the Nuremberg Chronicle

A page from the Nuremberg Chronicle where a reader has put an x-mark through the passage and woodcut illustration of Pope Joan.

The Rare Book Collection’s copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle contains a variety of wood-engraved illustrations, coats of arms, maps, and portraits. The fabled Pope Joan is depicted in ceremonial regalia holding her baby. Legend has it that Pope Joan disguised herself as a man and rose through the ranks of the Vatican to become Pope, where she was only discovered to be a woman when she went into labor during a procession. In this copy, the illustration of Pope Joan and the accompanying text that describes her has been “expurgated,” by a previous owner. Expurgating books was a common practice encouraged by the Vatican’s commissioned censors in localities around the globe.

The History of the World, by Sir Walter Raleigh

Engraved half-title page for The History of the World. At London printed for Walter Burre. 1614.

A page from the History of the World taken from the introduction. Text is in English.

The North Carolina Collection holds a copy of Sir Walter Raleigh’s The History of the World. Raleigh’s works were subjected to censorship by the English crown. After he fell out of popularity with the Royal Court of England, Raleigh was condemned to live in the Tower of London for over a decade before his execution. From there, he authored The History of the World. Soon after publication, the work was banned by King James I of England for, “being too saucy in censuring princes.”

Leaves of Grass and Go Tell It on the Mountain

Today, attempts to ban books target mostly LGBTQ and BIPOC authors, and our final selections highlight the longer history of challenges like these. The Rare Book Collection holds a first edition copy of Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman and two editions of Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin.

Leaves of Grass

Cover of the first edition of Leaves of Grass. The title is guilt and the letters are stylized to look like plants.

Title page of the first edition of Leaves of Grass. Brooklyn, New York: 1855.

Upon publication, Leaves of Grass was banned in a number of libraries in the United States; in 1865, Whitman was even fired from his job as a federal clerk in the Interior Department in Washington, D.C., after his employer found a copy in Whitman’s desk and became disgusted by the work’s sexually suggestive passages.

Go Tell It on the on Mountain

Cover of the 1953 paperback edition of James Baldwin's Go Tell it on the Mountain. Yellow background with stylized red sun and black and yellow shadowed highrise buildings.

Cover of the 1953 paperback edition of James Baldwin's Go Tell it on the Mountain. Red background with stylized young boy in the foreground and red shadowed highrise building in the background.

James Baldwin’s Go Tell it on the Mountain has been banned or challenged in various libraries across the United States for similar allegations that the work is sexually explicit and therefore, to some, inappropriate. The 1953 paperback edition is featured first above, depicting a city block and yellow sky. The second image shows a variant cover design rejected by author.