Literacy Lessons Learned in the South

The essay, Lessons From Down Under: Reflections on Meanings of Literacy and Knowledge From an African-American Female Growing Up in Rural Alabama by Bessie House-Soremekun talks about the literacy lessons Bessie learned from her close knit family in Alabama.  She talks off talking about how for African Americans oral tradition has always been important because that was the main source of communication for blacks during the time period of slavery. Bessie then elaborates on the history of the Civil Rights movement and the impacts it had on African American especially in the south.

            The essay talks about how the movement was born in Alabama and how “The Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-59 marks a watershed in the modern are of America’s Civil Rights years” (p. 58).  This was important because even though the civil rights movement was started in the south after laws were passed to stop the laws set up by “separate but equal”, this did not apply to the southern states.  The civil rights movement was meant to establish a equal playing field for every American, but in the south unspoken laws were set up to hinder blacks from becoming or from being seen as equals.

            Bessie also talks about the literacy lessons she learned throughout her lifetime of education.  She was raised in a middle class family where education was very important.  Her family valued formal school literacy as well as informal literacy.  She learned in achieved numerous things in school, but she also had to learn how the south worked during the 60’s and 70’s.  She began to notice how her grandmother was being disrespected by whites because they referred to her by her first name, while her grandmother always referred to the white people as “Mr. or Mrs.”.  Looking back on these situations she realized that her grandmother “made sure that I understood this form of literacy was part of the unwritten ruled in the segregated south of my country” (64).  She knew how important education was and power one gained by being educated.  She told herself that she was going to obtain a PhD because it was the highest form of education a person could have.

            Overall I really enjoyed this essay because it showed that even though Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Rosa parks and other African Americans tried to fight for everyone to be equal by having freedom riots, sit-ins, and freedom rides the south never really obtained true freedom.  Instead the white authority set up unspoken laws that still separated blacks from whites.  Whites still wanted to have a higher authority than the black people in the south and this was their way of accomplishing it.  This reading opened my eyes to the fact that there is a difference between the north and south.