Going Against the Grain

African Americans have fought long and hard for a good education. In the past, slavery imposed negative images on how womanhood was defined. African American women specifically were seen as inventory for reproduction and were treated as genderless insignificant chattels. Their womanhood was defined as capital workers. They were doubly oppressed because of their gender and race. However, women remained strong. They were said to have been beaten down in the past but not broken. They sought literacy as their key mechanism to change the way society viewed them. The only way to obtain this literacy was through activism, advocacy, and action.
The quest that African American women set out on was mainly for literacy and learning. Through this literacy they could redefine their sense of womanhood and present themselves through their writing. This literacy was like a tool that allowed them the ability to reimagine their worlds and better themselves. Through their stories of visionaries of women, they used sociocognitive ability. They wrote and taught others what they learned. Activism led women to take on roles throughout their African American communities. They were mothers, teachers, social activists and problem solvers. Their spirits were set on activism and the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Women like Clara Howard sought for the opening doors of opportunity. She helped in the creation of schools of our own which were African American public colleges and universities. After the 19th century there was an ever present grand momentum for literacy.
Spelman College is a perfect testament to the fact that Black women can stand together as one strong body who express their passions, ideas, and excellence through literacy. If it wasn’t for slavery in the past and the long fight for education that our African ancestors endured, this strong body would not be present. They paved the way for future generations who long to be literate and tell individual stories of the different African American visionaries. In this chapter, “Going against the Grain” there is an important factor that states “African American women have built a tradition of literacy and action and have established themselves as uses of the word, as “dark spinners of word magic”. This entails that all Black literate women have come a long way on this call for human rights and literacy. This action has led to the establishment of historically Black colleges such as Spelman and continues to provide standards of excellence in every aspect of literacy. In this case, women went against the grain to gain a higher level of literacy.