When I was a toddler, I thought that learning to read was something that would happen to me automatically, like growing taller or losing my baby teeth. I saw how much my mother and father loved to read, and I assumed that I would love to read as well. The idea that I might not be allowed to learn to read never occurred to me.
Now, of course, I know that learning to read is a privilege that not everyone is granted. Throughout history, governments and religious institutions have withheld the right to read from people they deemed unworthy. This deprives them of what I think is one of the greatest pleasures available to human beings, but it does much more than that. It prevents them from participating in their own government. It makes them vulnerable to being cheated in business deals and legal transactions. It prevents them from joining together with others to resist political and economic oppression.
This was especially true for black people in some parts of the United States up until the late 1800s. It wasn’t just that they didn’t have access to teachers and schools and books. It was actually a crime in some states for anyone to teach black people to read. As the illustration above from The American anti-slavery almanac, for 1839 shows, some white people in power were willing to resort to violence to stop black people from learning to read.
Fortunately, many courageous individuals found ways to learn to read in spite of the obstacles they had to overcome, including the threat of severe punishment. That’s a testament to the power of the human spirit and the power of the written word.
The picture books described below tell the story of people who were determined to learn to read and to share the power of reading with others.
Ben and the Emancipation Proclamation
By Pat Sherman
Illustrated by Floyd Cooper
Ben and the Emancipation Proclamation is a fictionalized version of the story of Benjamin C. Holmes. Ben was born into slavery at a time when slaves were not allowed to learn to read. His father knew enough to teach Ben the alphabet, but he was sold away before he could teach Ben more.
Ben was apprenticed to a tailor, Mr. Bleeker, where he discovered “all kinds of secret ways to learn how to read.” When sent on errands by himself, he studied the words on street signs, the sides of wagons, in store windows, and on packages. Sometimes he found a discarded newspaper and sounded out the words he found there. Then he began to teach himself to write.
When the Civil War began, the tailor and his family fled the city. Ben was sent to a slave prison, where he was confined to a cramped shed packed with men and boys. One night the men woke Ben from sleep. They had pooled their chewing tobacco and used it to bribe a guard for a newspaper. They insisted that Ben read it to them.
What Ben read that night would later become known as the Emancipation Proclamation: “All persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free …”
The men cheered, and Ben realized they were cheering for him as much as for the words he read. It was the first time they had heard a black man read out loud.
Floyd Cooper’s oil paintings are done in sepia tones that seem to glow with light. Particularly effective is the final scene of Ben peeking through the slats of the shed at the morning light because “whatever this new freedom looked like, he wanted to be the first to see it.”
An author’s note provides more information about Ben Holmes, who enrolled at Fisk University in Nashville after the Civil War. He became a member of the school’s Jubilee Singers, with which he toured American and Europe. He died young, probably from tuberculosis. Additional sources of information on Ben Holmes are listed in the back matter.
You can learn more about Pat Sherman here. More information about Floyd Cooper is available here.
Midnight Teacher: Lilly Ann Granderson and Her Secret School
By Janet Halfmann
Illustrated by London Ladd
Midnight Teacher is the story Lilly Ann Eliza Cox, who was born into slavery around 1821. She worked in the master’s house, where his children often played school with her and even gave her a tattered spelling book. It wasn’t illegal for slaves to read in Kentucky, but Lilly still knew to hide her interest in reading. She eventually learned how to write and to read the Bible.
When the master and his family were away on Sundays, Lilly Ann taught the other slave children what she’d learned about reading and writing. She formed letters with twigs and had her students trace them with their fingers. People of all ages began to join her classes.
When Lilly Ann’s master died, she was sold at an auction and sent to Mississippi, where the punishment for teaching slaves to read was harsh: thirty-nine lashes with a whip for both the teacher and the student. Lilly Ann decided to risk it anyway. She knew that education was a path to freedom for her people. She and her students met in a secluded cabin in the dead of night, after a day of backbreaking work. They used sticks dipped in homemade ink to write.
Lilly Ann and her students were caught in the act, and she waited anxiously to be told what her punishment To her surprise, the verdict was that it was not against the law for a slave to teach another slave. She was free to continue her school. After the Civil War, Lilly Ann and another formerly enslaved woman taught a class of 2765 students, and she continued to teach until late in her life.
London Ladd’s illustrations match the intensity of the drama within the story. The scenes of slaves slipping through the night to their school and studying by candlelight are especially compelling.
An author’s note provides more information about Lilly Ann Granderson (whose name has been spelled in different ways over the years). It lists the accomplishments of some of her descendents, but her legacy also lives on in the descendents of the hundreds of people she taught to read. The risks she was willing to take in order to teach her students to read are a testament to how important reading is to a free world.
You can learn more about Janet Halfmann here. More information about London Ladd is available here.
Carter Reads the Newspaper
By Deborah Hopkinson
Illustrated by Don Tate
Carter Reads the Newspaper is a picture book biography of Carter G. Woodson, the man who created Black History Month. Carter wasn’t born into slavery, but both of his parents were. He was born ten years after the Civil War ended, when times were still hard for former slaves and their families. Carter could attend school only four months of the year, but he continued to learn outside of school. Whenever he could find a newspaper, he read it aloud to his father.
Carter had to forego high school for work in the coal mines of West Virginia, where the work was grueling and dangerous. One of his coworkers was a Civil War veteran who couldn’t read himself but nonetheless set up a reading room in his room for other miners. He acquired books by African American writers and newspapers from around the country.
Carter began reading aloud to the men who gathered in the reading room, and this became a form of education for himself. When the men asked questions about what he read from newspapers, he researched the answers, becoming knowledgeable about politics, economics, and the law.
He continued to pursue education and eventually earned a PhD in history from Harvard University, the second African American to do so. It was at Harvard that Carter heard one of his professors say that Black people had no history. When Carter objected, the professor challenged him to prove him wrong. Black History Month is the result of Carter’s determination to do just that.
The text ends with an inspiring message for readers of all ages:
Carter G. Woodson didn’t just study history. He changed it.
And we can too.
Don Tate’s have a charming, folk-art feel to them, but they don’t shy away from showing the hardships of Carter Woodson’s early life, such as when he hauled garbage to earn money or when a heavy piece of slate crashed down on him in a coal mine. When the Harvard professor says Black people have no history, Carter is shown with an “Excuse me?” look, while memories of his family’s own history appear as shadowy images.
The end pages feature sketches of Black leaders, and the back matter includes a list of their names and brief details about their accomplishments. A bibliography, a list of internet resources about Carter Woodson, and a timeline of his life are also provided.
You can learn more about Deborah Hopkinson here. More information about Don Tate is available here.
The Oldest Student: How Mary Walker Learned to Read
By Rita Lorraine Hubbard
Illustrated by Oge Mora
Even as a very young child, Mary Walker knew the rules of slavery. The first was that, as a slave, she had to keep working. The second was that slaves should not be taught to read or write. That didn’t keep her from dreaming of the day when she would be free and she would learn to read.
Freedom came when Mary was 15, but learning to read was a long time coming — a very long time.
Life after emancipation was desperately hard for Mary and her family. She cleaned houses and cared for other people’s children to earn money to help feed her family. She was given a beautiful Bible by a group of evangelists, and she longed to read it, but work came first.
For almost all of the rest of her long life, Mary Walker had to postpone learning to read. She married, had a child, was widowed, married again, and had more children, all the while working hard on a farm or in white people’s homes. There was never time for learning to read, but she kept the Bible and the dream of someday reading it.
When she was 114 and had outlived her entire family, Mary learned of a reading class in her retirement home. The time for her to learn to read had come at last. It took more than a year, but she did it. She could finally read her Bible, 101 years after it was given to her.
Mary’s accomplishment was so amazing that she received much acclaim, and a representative from the US Department of Education declared, “Mrs. Mary Walker, I pronounce you the nation’s oldest student.”
Oge Mora’s illustrations for the book were rendered in mixed media, including collage with patterned paper and book clippings. They create a homespun look that is a perfect complement to the details of Mary Walker’s life. I especially love the scene in which Mary has fallen asleep at her desk while studying, her pencil still grasped in one hand, while a jumble of letters swirl above her.
An author’s note gives more information about Mary’s life, and the end pages feature black-and-white photographs of her later life, including of her first plane ride at the age of 118.
You can learn more about Rita Lorraine Hubbard here. More information about Oge Mora is available here.
Being able to read is a form of power. It’s a power that everyone deserves to have. In some parts of the world, it is a power that is still denied to some groups of people. I hope that the picture books described here will inspire young people to become champions of the right to read.
The featured image above is from The American anti-slavery almanac, for 1839. You can learn more about it here.