The promotion of universal public education across the United States began in the midst of the Civil War. These are sea islands occupied by the Union forces off the coast of South Carolina. There, thousands of black children began to go to schools clearly built for them. There, after decades of literacy denied, I learned to read and write.
As is known, Sea Island experiments marked positive moments in the history of black education, pedagogical expert Derek W. Black states in his new book.Dangerous Learning: The Long South’s War on Black Literacy. ”
Black, director of the University of South Carolina Constitutional Law Center, said: In doing so, they “changed the possibilities of all the children in the South, black and white life.”
But bad habits die hard. In “Dangerous Learning,” Black explores policies designed to curb education among Black Americans before the Civil War, and from book bans to anti-DEI directives, the legacy of those policies is now available today’s public We continue to depend on education.
Charleston, South Carolina, began in the 1820s and traced paranoia against Vessy in Denmark and the literacy that later spill over the halls of power in the South due to the slave uprising. same.
This paranoia led to restrictive laws such as the Black Seaman Act. This accused him of imprisoning black sailors at ports and criminalizing reading, pretending to be falsely spreading the “contagion” of abolitionist literature.
These anti-literary policies conveyed the opposite message of their intentions. They convinced Black Americans the power of the words written and decided to learn them more than ever.
Black continues through the reconstruction, Jim Crow and Brown through stud to equality in the south for the next two centuries. v. The unwavering beliefs of black Americans in the promise of education for all remained strong.
America needs the same loyalty to public education today, he writes, “critical racial theory, curriculum transparency, “socialist” teachers, and diversity to public schools, and equity.” The rising delusion extending to sex, and surprisingly similarity to Southern delusions than Northern textbooks, is Northern teachers, Northern universities, and Northern popular literature decades before the Civil War. ”
In this interview with Edsurge, Black is hidden by the “dangerous learning,” how challenges to traditional public schooling enforce rather than resolve political divides, and the sad history of anti-literature. We are discussing unexpected success.
The following interviews have been compiled for length and clarity.
Edsurge: Links some of the most intense anti-liTeracy policies in the South to three very powerful and charismatic black men: Friedman of Charleston, David Walker, Boston’s abolitionist writer, enslaved Nut turner. Can you talk about their influence and impact?
Derek W. Black: I think the traditional story that most people hear is that black literacy was constantly criminalised in the South during slavery, or that all enslaved people were forbidden from reading. . And that’s not true. Many schools were open and open, including Charleston, Savannah, Wilmington and other places where young enslaved black children attended school.
I think there are a few things going on. For one, we don’t know if Slavocracy assessed the dangers of literacy early. They thought, “Let’s share the Bible with the black people. Perhaps it will make them a better slave.”
But what these three men showed was that literacy was in fact very strong. It enhances them in their community, allowing them to access dangerous ideas, dangerous learning, wielding words to them, reinterpret reality, or reinterpret American ideas, It simply gave them the ability to interpret and apply them to them in their own situations in a very revolutionary way.
Religion continues to appear in this story. First, as a way to teach enslaved people to follow, and then as part of the issue of literacy, when black preachers targeted spreading knowledge to herds. After the Civil War, preachers and churches were instrumental in literacy programs and establishing black schools.
The religious part of this story is probably the most difficult. Black literacy was a function of the 1700s and 1800s, and many British missionaries established schools here, believing that that was their purpose. The delay in criminalizing literacy in Virginia, South Carolina and North Carolina was a function of religious communities.
However, religious ethics are not sufficient to create a public school system. What you see in the aftermath of the civil war is the amazing people who want to participate. [in education] For religious reasons, they needed infrastructure, they needed support, they needed systems.
Religion cannot do that. I’ve never tried to do that.
The government does not rely on the goodwill of individuals. The government will create systems and infrastructure to extend education to everyone. If you leave it to religion, certainly there are great schools out there, but they are not going to serve all the kids.
Could you please tell us a little about the Black Seaman Act of 1822?
Denmark Wiese and his rebellion or planned rebellion in South Carolina are based on the idea that it is truly due to outsiders bringing ideas. So if they can stop those outsiders from bringing pamphlets and incitement material – if they can stop those incitement conversations – it will fix things.
Legacy is a really straight throop line. When talking about the history of slavery, it is always the South’s claim that the ability to deal with slavery was beyond the federal boundaries. So when we talk about the rights of the state, or when the South talk about the rights of the state, it is [phrase] “The rights of the state” have almost always been about slavery.
The federal constitution says that Congress regulates interstate commerce and that what you do under the Black Seaman Act is blocking interstate commerce. In itself, Congress was not so much trying to impose slavery issues, but rather, it would not be possible to isolate the crew trying to bring courts and newspapers to Charleston. This causes public controversy. And you see these controversies repeat over time. The South is not in the face of slavery, but in fact this enduring effort in the South is to utilize state rights in a variety of ways to use state rights to strengthen institutions. there is.
Did you argue that the Black Seaman Act protects the health of the people of Charleston?
At that point, I think they understand that they can’t shut down a port for old reasons just because they don’t like it. And they really need to come up with this idea that these are practically sick seafarers. So, literally, they’ll talk about it as contagion. [So the thinking was] If you can isolate scurvy in the bay, you can also isolate stimulating infections in the bay.
It was about controlling information…
We now have the theory to remove the US Department of Education and perhaps return education to the state. Most of what people at the highest level talk about is completely in full control over it anyway, the curriculum, the teacher certification, all of those things.
So, what do you need to return it to the state? And the answer is control over the anti-discrimination norms. This is what confused some people on one side of the aisle, [who] “Oh, this is racial indoctrination or gender identity,” or whatever it is. What I want the federal government to come out is this type of race and non-discrimination.
It’s fair to say it was the federal government that ended racism in our schools. It is the federal government that has put an end to the exclusion of women from certain institutions of higher education. The federal government said sexual harassment of young women in classrooms and sexual assaults of young women in toilets must be taken seriously. You must actually send students with disabilities to attend your school.
That’s frustrating. Because I don’t think most Americans are riding on racism, sexual harassment, and the exclusion of students with disabilities. But when we talk about return control to the state, we say we are actually referring to return control to the state for these issues. Because the remaining issues are already in the state.
I will talk about these, even if they are not intended, as they are coded Republican calls. If what we are doing is that Americans are away from where they find common ground and common values and retreat into our religious silos, then retreat into our racial silos , with children, 13 years, five days a week, retreat into our political silo. How will this diverse and increasingly fractured democracy survive? I don’t know the answer to that. I think that’s a question that you need to take seriously before you go down that path. But now, more and more politicians are happy to go that path because of these incoherent types of emotions or these kinds of frustration. I don’t think it really appreciates the serious and serious danger that lies ahead.
After the civil war until the mid-1870s, there was this brief period when black literacy blossomed after the reconstruction was over. But then came the long period of Jim Crow South, which continued into the mid-20th century. “Dangerous Learning” points to how progress and regression cycled. However, I felt that the period of good after the Civil War was very short and the period of bad was very long.
Well, that’s true. Attempts to resume democracy last only for a short period of time. And we can say the same thing about brown v. Is that so when you were on the Board of Education? It only lasts for a short period of time.
But as I look back at it, the monumental scale of what has been achieved in those ten years is so huge that five or sixty years in that new monumental paradigm I had to work in. And I think it’s the same thing with brown. The separation did not begin until the late ’60s, but the way it forced society was so monumental that it could not be reverted.
So, empirically speaking, almost everything that was achieved during separation is lost in terms of integration levels. However, in order to stop the story, one might completely dismiss all the other realistic and symbolic changes that have changed the structure of American culture.
So, yeah, our schools may not be as integrated as they should have been. But the man, Brown pushed us into a new era. Yes, Jim Crow was set up in our public school, but you know, millions of once enslaved children go to school and then to schools they didn’t have. I went [before].
And millions of poor and working-class white people have moved from illiteracy from itself. Therefore, even if it does not erase all sin, it fundamentally changes the South. brown v. The Board of Education will further fundamentally change the country, despite not erasing the crime.
The South and the Americas are in quite different places if not for their interests. And we must continue to make those fundamental changes. We are then drawn back to some of our old habits.
But that doesn’t mean we’re not moving forward.
America has fundamentally changed these events, but still has a deep, dark underbelly that is clinging to pull us back. Both can be true at the same time.
