How African Americans Emerged from Slavery with a Hunger for Education
From Plantations to Churches to the Classroom, Ex-Slaves Tirelessly Pursued Public Schooling
The focus of my research and writing is women’s involvement in higher education, especially women from the Pentecostal and Holiness faith traditions. While conducting research on African American female seminaries, I found myself reaching back to a very rich yet little-known history of educational efforts by African Americans both during and after slavery. The narratives of those days should remind us just how stubborn and enduring the hunger for education has been in American life.
In the United States, slave masters were intent on keeping their slaves illiterate. Two events drove …
