Reading, Writing, and Difference and Twelve Years a Slave

I want to turn to one of Henry Louis Gates' early articles, "Reading, Writing, and Difference," which appeared in the Mississippi College Law Review nearly thirty years ago, back in 1984.  (And in expanded and revised form as "Writing 'Race' and the Difference It Makes" in Critical Inquiry in 1985.)  One theme of the article is that Enlightenment thinkers portrayed people who could not read as unintelligent.  In an effort to reconfirm the status of slaves as unintelligent and thus confirm the prejudices of those living in the wake of the Enlightenment, then, southern legislatures prohibited teaching slaves to read.  Gates' theory is that Enlightenment "knowledge" drove restrictions on slave literacy and that people of African descent wrote in part to prove their worth as thinkers and as humans.

I see the world somewhat differently -- and in some ways with less hierarchy than Gates or at least with less emphasis on Enlightenment ideas as a driving force behind the statutes restricting literacy.  Slave literacy was a threat to the slave system and, thus, slave-owners needed to restrict literacy because they recognized its power.  The reaction of southern legislatures, thus, confirms the importance of literacy -- a key vehicle of the Enlightenment.  That is, I see the arrows indicating the direction of influence differently. I think the Enlightenment's recognition of the power of literacy was confirmed by southern legislators who feared literacy.  Restrictions on literacy are the end result of the recognition that literate slaves would undermine the system of slavery.  On this point I think there's a lot to be said -- and I hope to say some of it one of these days.

Let me turn right now to one piece of evidence: the discussion around Twelve Years a Slave and the way that Solomon Northup had to hide his literacy.  Epps specifically forbids him to read.  When Epps found out that Northup could read and write, Epps "assured [him], with emphasis, if he ever caught me with a book, or with pen and ink, he would give me a hundred lashes.  He said he wanted me to understand that he bought "niggers" to work and not to educate."  

While Bass is on Epps' plantation in Louisiana Bass (the white hero of the book) comments on the restrictions on slave literacy.  He uses the restriction to explain why slaves are poorly informed: "your slaves have no privileges. You'd whip one of them if caught reading a book. They are held in bondage, generation after generation, deprived of mental improvement, and who can expect them to possess much knowledge?"  This fits with the thesis that literacy was feared because of its power -- rather than prohibited because illiteracy would confirm the Enlightenment theories of slave-owners.  Of course, this is just one piece of evidence and it is not inconsistent with other motives.  Bass' conversation with Epps supports the idea that slaves were kept from learning so that they would both be ignorant and appear to be uneducable.  The latter fits with Gates' thesis in "Reading, Writing, and Difference."  Twelve Years a Slave is also consistent with the thesis that restrictions on literacy were designed to make it much more difficult for slaves to challenge the system of slavery.

Comments

[Bill Turnier]

Al, I do not know if you ever got to meet our recently deceased and long retired colleague Harry Groves. His grandfather was a slave on a Virginia plantation. He and several other of the slaves were offspring of the plantation owner and a slave with which he had an amorous relationship. These individuals lived a modest distance from the main house and working plantation. The owner made sure that all his offspring were taught to read and write and lived a different existence even when it came time for them to work at about age 16. Because Harry's grandfather lived off in a grove of trees, when he made it to Union lines, he chose his own last name Groves. Harry was always proud of the fact that his family name was the choice of his family. His grandfather did reasonably well after the war. I wonder how many of the ex-slaves who succeeded in the post war environment had a background in which somebody decided to break the law and teach select slaves to read and write. Harry's father and his brother decided to leave the south and took off for Colorado where they were reasonably successful businessmen. Harry, of course, was Phi Beta Kappa, attended the University of Chicago Law School, got a Masters in Law at Harvard and then took off for the Far East where he was the prime author of a national constitution and the founding dean of a law school. I note all this to demonstrate the empowerment that can come from literacy and the cruel barrier that condemnation to illiteracy could have had for others. I know that many of our African-American colleagues came from backgrounds where their ancestors were made to live in forced illiteracy. Their success and that of their ancestors who subsequently acquired literacy is all the more impressive.

[Alfred L. Brophy]

Thanks for this remembrance, Bill. I never met Professor Groves, unfortunately. But I really appreciate hearing about him and his family's history. Love the origin of the family name, especially.