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In Pursuit of Letters: A History of the Bray Schools for Enslaved Children in Colonial Virginia
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2017
Extract
The pursuit of literacy is a central theme in the history of African Americans in the United States. In the Western tradition, as Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and others have observed, people of African descent have been written out of “culture” because they have been identified with oral traditions. In that setting, literacy signifies both reason and civilization. Performance in print earned the laurel of humanity. Consequently, for well over 200 years, the African-American literary tradition has been defined as one in which books talked and a few slave authors achieved, at once, voice and significance by making a book talk back by writing.
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References
1 Henry Louis Gates, Jr., “Preface: Talking Book,” in The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, ed., Gates, , Jr. and McKay, Nellie Y. (New York: Norton, W.W. and Company, 1998), xxviii. For a fuller account of the talking book, see Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary Criticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 127–69 and Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the “Racial” Self (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 3–79. For a wider discussion of the early African-American belletristic tradition, see Robert, B. Stepto's From Behind the Veil. A Study of Afro-American Narrative (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979); and Andrews, William L.’ To Tell a Free Story: The First Century of Afro-American Autobiography, 1760–1865 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986).Google Scholar
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3 The historiography on slave education in colonial America is limited. Carter, G. Woodson's The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861 is perhaps the earliest known comprehensive account. Originally published in 1919, Woodson examined how slaves achieved literacy, and how those efforts changed over time and space. Following in Woodson's footsteps, subsequent historians have revealed more about slave efforts to gain knowledge of letters in early America: Thad Tate, for example, the Bray school in Williamsburg, Virginia, and Oast, Jennifer, the Bray school in Williamsburg and Fredericksburg, Virginia, as well as two failed schemes to start similar schools in York Town and Norfolk, Virginia. Arguably, the most extensive account of the work of the Associates of the Late Bray, Dr. Thomas is Van, John C. Horne's Religious Philanthropy and Colonial Slavery. In that edited collection of letters between the Bible society and its associates overseas, Van Horne offers an exhaustive picture of the Bray schools not only in Virginia, but also throughout British North America. Specifically, he focused on the success of the school in Philadelphia. Jeffrey, H. Richards's recent study of Samuel Davies and his work among the enslaved in Piedmont, Virginia demonstrated yet another aspect to Woodson's narrative. Significantly, Richards expands upon George Pilcher's, W. earlier work on Samuel Davies. In a similar fashion, E. Jennifer Monaghan's Reading and Writing in Colonial America contributes to the scholarship in this field. In that extensive study of education in British North America, Monaghan has added to the historical discourse concerning slave literacy by revealing that enslaved African Americans (very similar to white slaveholders) learned how to read and write separately and that in turn may explain why some slaveholders were open to instructing their slaves in reading. The same could not be substantiated when it came to slaves learning how to write. In contrast, this essay builds on this body of scholarship in several ways. First, it reveals the stories of several unofficial Bray schools in colonial Virginia. Second, it offers a more extensive profile of the African-American children who attended those Bray schools and a biography of Isaac Bee, himself a Bray school scholar. Third, it establishes the African-American literacy tradition as a useful framework to acknowledge the uncelebrated lives of African Americans who were literate but unlettered, thus, complicating the current emphasis on African-American belle letters. Finally, in establishing the African-American literacy tradition, it contributes to current scholarship about slave religious culture, more specifically the rich symbolism of slave spirituals, such as Lawrence Levine's Black Culture and Black Consciousness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977); Albert Raboteau's Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978); Sterling Stuckey, Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988) and others who have written thoughtfully about slave music and culture. 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45 Following the Stamp Act of 1765, the Townshend duties of 1767 on paper, paint, lead, glass, and tea deepen the conflict between Great Britain and her North American subjects. Intend to generate revenue of the Crown; it united the colonists further in their push toward independence. As Pauline Maier pointed out in her study of the American Revolution, the Townshend Acts marked a pivotal moment in the burgeoning crisis and set the stage in Massachusetts for violence and bloodshed. Maier, From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765–1776 (New York: Norton, W.W., 1991), 113–57.Google Scholar
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82 Rev. Marye, James, Jr. to Rev. Waring, John, 25 September 1764, in Horne, Van, Religious Philanthropy, 218. To judge from Philip, D. Morgan's study of slavery in the Chesapeake, the rector of the St. Thomas Parish made an accurate report of the number of Africans in his parish. Although the number of Africans imported decreased, most of those who were brought into the colony went to counties in the Piedmont region. See Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 60–61. For a fuller account, see Morgan, Philip D. and Nicholls, Michael L., “Slaves in Piedmont Virginia, 1720–1790,” William and Mary Quarterly 46 (April 1989): 217–23.Google Scholar
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