Heather Andrea Williams · 2005 · EPUB · Calibre ID 12076
Resurfaced in The Ignorant Master (2026-10-15).
Role in the triad
Ground: learning and teaching without masters, under law that forbade both.
Why this book
Jacotot’s ignorant masters in fact (native schools taught by people who had only just learned to read); the antiliteracy statutes (1819–1834 cluster) fall inside Jacotot’s career; the ‘self-made’ that Steiner names, at its real cost.
Quotations
Verified against the book’s own text on the day of the reading.
- “What learning dey would get in dem days, dey been get it at night. Taught demselves.” (Louisa Gause, ch. 1 epigraph) | “Some slaves copied letters and words whose meanings they could not yet decipher onto fences and in the dirt.” (ch. 1) | “Some young man, some woman, or old preacher, in cellar, or shed, or corner of a Negro meeting-house, with the alphabet in hand, or a torn spelling-book, is their teacher.” (Alvord, ch. 6) | “Teaching amounted to a political act for African Americans in the emancipation period. And it was an act of courage.” (ch. 6) | “But why have a Freedman’s Primer any more than a Dutchman’s Primer or an Irishman’s Primer?” (ch. 7 epigraph) | Excerpt ch. 1 (pit schools) | Appendix: NC 1830–31 ‘the use of figures excepted’
Themes
antiliteracy statutes · Black teachers · Freedman’s Primer · freedpeople’s schools · native schools · pit schools · slave literacy · spelling book