Miles Davis, legendary jazz musician and composer, wrote it best: Knowledge is freedom and slavery is ignorance.
Since being brought to America, blacks have been subjected to unfathomable injustices. Being captured, sold, and shipped to America as slaves, African Americans were denied all decent standards of living, including education. Widespread propaganda insisted that these people required this lifestyle—that it was only natural to enslave them. There is nothing natural about the institution of slavery.
In order to maintain one’s position as master, he must deny his slaves any decent luxuries. Keeping these individuals illiterate was a conscious, methodic decision to keep blacks ignorant and consequently oppressed. For far too long, stereotypes have been used to feed negative agendas against blacks; it is the masterminds of these agendas who forced unfavorable ideas to be reality (e.g., supporters of slavery referring to slaves as ignorant, the justice system and the mass incarceration of black men, corrupt school systems and failing numbers, etc.).
The enslavement and oppression of individuals directly correlates to the level of ignorance forced upon them. Some colonies prohibited teaching slaves how to read and write, though it was a widespread belief that slaves should not be awarded this luxury. However, in some areas, slaves were taught to read from Biblical passages. In “We Slipped and Learned to Read” by Janet Cornelius, she notes the distinction between “Bible literacy” and “liberating literacy.” By overseeing the texts that slaves were exposed to, slave owners were able to maintain their superiority while teaching slaves Christianity.
Frederick Douglass is a prime example of an individual who was given an “inch” of education, but took a “mile.” For those of you who are unfamiliar with Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Douglass recounts his early life with the Aulds. Being unfamiliar with slave culture, Mrs. Auld treated Douglass kindly and taught him to read. Upon learning of this, Mr. Auld forbids his wife from continuing these lessons and insists such lessons essentially ruin slaves. This situation sparks enlightenment within Douglass—his level of freedom correlated with his level of education.
Douglass was exposed to basic literacy, but by way of his own persistence, he became an intellectual, an abolitionist, and a visionary. Imagine the contributions slaves and other oppressed peoples could have made had they been given the opportunities. Black History Month is an excellent time to consider the evolving relationship between African Americans and education. Not all of our American stories started with a land-owning, white male; not all of our ancestors experienced this “land of equal opportunity.”
Education should take on a whole other level of importance for people whose family stories are of social and economic struggle. African Americans, in particular, should value education more than any other group of Americans. Hands down. The blatant, relentless efforts to keep your ancestors oppressed and uneducated should be the single most influential factor in your pursuit to higher education. Imagine what you can do with the opportunities that are now granted to you. Immerse yourself into education, freethinking, and social change. You must take the initiative to read and learn from multiple sources, outside of institutions of learning. “There can be no freedom without education” (Douglass). Be free physically, emotionally, and most importantly, mentally. Indulge in what was once scarce and forbidden, for the mind is mightier than all else.