“Lessons from Down Under: Reflections on Meaning of Literacy and Knowledge from an African-American Female Growing Up in Rural Alabama”

This chapter of “Readers of the Quilt” describes the kind of literacy that the black population in the South were forced to develop in order to make it through racist territory. It conveys the several types of literacy in rural Alabama after the civil rights movement. During these times the most pivotal roles of the leaders and churches in this rural state was to help African Americans have the ability to interpret and understand the rules in their white communities. The power of spoken word instead of written literature was portrayed by both the church and by leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. These skills gave rise to many movements and increased levels of literacy because of the empowerment that it had on African American’s desire for change. Also following the prominent Civil Rights Act, the Affirmative Action Legislation allowed for more African Americans were able to gain higher social statuses and levels of literacy because of the establishment of the job opportunities given to minorities.
A woman from rural Alabama gives a personal account of her life and how literacy impacted her life in its entirety. Growing up in the church and learning morality issues for a constituted moral life, helped her literacy. She learned how to recite, read and understand by use of the Bible through hymnals and scriptural readings. She describes how her family stressed education and specifically how her mother stressed literacy in terms of emotional and intellectual development. This type of literacy is referred to as formal literacy in this chapter of the book. It was acquired through learning through educational modes and activities. She goes on to convey her experiences in her schooling and how Black student were not allowed to entry of many white schools. In Black schools, the education was lacking, lessons and textbooks were very poor. This rendered the Blacks students and authors’ voices stories. Furthermore, stories written by Black authors and African American literature were nonexistent in education at this time.
This personal account gives in great detail the impacts of how the love of learning shown throughout a household and community provides the gain of literacy in such a rural area. Many African Americans do not come across this type of experience in rural states. As a native of Mississippi, I have witnessed the impacts of students and their whole outlooks in terms of their education. Consequently, the desire and confidence deriving from this type of experience is significant. Every African American should continue or make efforts to be this quest for formal literacy.