Derek W. Black, a Professor and author of "Dangerous Learning: The South's Long War on Black Literacy," delves into the historical battles for Black literacy in the South. He discusses how literacy became a powerful tool for freedom and resistance against oppression. The conversation highlights Denmark Vesey's rebellion and the tragic consequences imposed by white authorities. Black also connects past struggles to contemporary issues in education, emphasizing the ongoing fight for equality and the importance of open discourse in realizing true democratic principles.
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question_answer ANECDOTE
Derek Black's Background
Derek Black grew up in Clinton, TN, the first Southern white high school to integrate.
A college African American Studies course using Derek Bell's book shaped his career path.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Project Origins
Black's book, Schoolhouse Burning, explored the history of public education rights.
Researching secret schools led him to the broader topic of Dangerous Learning.
insights INSIGHT
Literacy as Dividing Line
Literacy has been a dividing line between slavery and freedom, and then citizenship and second-class citizenship, since the early 1800s.
Black people fought to cross that line, while many white people fought to maintain it.
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Derek Bell
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Dangerous Learning, The South's Long War on Black Literacy
Dangerous Learning, The South's Long War on Black Literacy
The South's Long War on Black Literacy
R. Derek Black
R. Derek Black's "Dangerous Learning" meticulously chronicles the South's relentless campaign to suppress Black literacy, highlighting the brutal methods employed to maintain racial hierarchy. The book unveils the extraordinary courage and ingenuity of Black individuals who defied these oppressive measures, pursuing education as a path to freedom. It traces the evolution of literacy from a subversive act to a tool for building democratic institutions during Reconstruction, and the devastating consequences of its subsequent suppression. Black's work underscores the enduring legacy of this historical struggle and its relevance to contemporary educational disparities.
Few have ever valued literacy as much as the enslaved Black people of the American South. For them, it was more than a means to a better life; it was a gateway to freedom and, in some instances, a tool for inspiring revolt. And few governments tried harder to suppress literacy than did those in the South. Everyone understood that knowledge was power: power to keep a person enslaved in mind and body, power to resist oppression. In the decades before the Civil War, Southern governments drove Black literacy underground, but it was too precious to be entirely stamped out.
Dangerous Learning: The South's Long War on Black Literacy (Yale UP, 2025) describes the violent lengths to which southern leaders went to repress Black literacy and the extraordinary courage it took Black people to resist. Derek W. Black shows how, from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the end of Reconstruction, literacy evolved from a subversive gateway to freedom to a public program to extend citizenship and build democratic institutions—and how, once Reconstruction was abandoned, opposition to educating Black children depressed education throughout the South for Black and white students alike. He also reveals the deep imprint those events had on education and how this legacy is resurfacing today.
Omari Averette-Phillips is a PhD student in the History department at UC Davis.
New Books in African American Studies 