Self-Taught

“Self-Taught is not merely the most comprehensive documentation and analysis of African American education in the South during the 1861–1871 period, it is in every respect the first definitive study of the formative stages of universal literacy and formal education among ex-slaves. Never before has anyone described so fully the broad range of roles and the significant contributions of African Americans to the development of formal and public education in the South for themselves and for the entire region.” —James D. Anderson, author of The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935

“With great skill, Heather Williams demonstrates the centrality of black people to the process of formal education — the establishment of schools, the creation of a cadre of teachers, the forging of standards of literacy and numeracy — in the post-emancipation years. As she does, Williams makes the case that the issue of education informed the Reconstruction period — the two-cornered struggle between North and South over the rebuilding of Southern society, the three-cornered struggle between white Northerners, white Southerners, and black people over the nature of education, and the less well-known contest between black Northerners and black Southerners over the direction of African American culture. Self-Taught is a work of major significance.” —Ira Berlin, University of Maryland