There’s a reason why reading was outlawed for enslaved Africans.
As the old adage goes: “Knowledge is power.” Brainwashing by using biblical teachings as a guise was critical to maintaining the power dynamic in the legal system of American chattel slavery.
However, even laws banning literacy, enforcing segregation in schools, and continued systemic oppression contributing to educational and economic disparities didn’t prevent and to this day, can’t stop, Black people’s ingenuity in gaining knowledge.
From advocating for more career opportunities, to providing vocational training and creating academic institutions, Black barrier-breakers in education have been instrumental in paving paths toward labor advancements for African Americans nationwide.
As the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH)—the creators of Black History Month— commemorates “African Americans and Labor” for its 2025 theme, acknowledging education is critical. Labor and education advocacy not only furthered Black career opportunities, but contributed to the United States’ overall social, political, cultural and economic power.
“Education remains one of the Black community’s most enduring values,” Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president emerita of the Children’s Defense Fund, once said. “It is sustained by the belief that freedom and education go hand in hand, that learning and training are essential to economic quality and independence.”
Anti-Literacy Laws
Arming those already strong, resilient, creative and brilliant enslaved Africans with the ability to read of Moses freeing the slaves in Israel, and about Jesus’ advocacy for the poor, sick and marginalized would have likely made them reconsider their masters’ teachings.
The possibility of enslaved people learning to read was a real concern for white slave masters working to uphold racist narratives and inhumane practices.
Making literacy illegal for Black people helped maintain the slavery money-making machine that powered this nation.
Anti-literacy laws were active in parts of the United States from 1740–even before it was officially established as a nation in 1776– to post slavery in places like Virginia in 1867, according to Annie E. Casey Foundation.
In “Narrative in the Life of Frederick Douglass” (1845), the great abolitionist shares his journey of learning how to read. At the age of 12, after finding various strategies to accomplish literacy, he read “The Columbian Orator” (1797), by Caleb Bingham, where he found two texts particularly interesting: 1) an interaction between a slave and master and 2) the Catholic emancipation.
“I read them over and over again with unabated interest. They gave tongue to interesting thoughts of my own soul, which had frequently lashed through my mind, and died away for want of utterance. The moral which I gained from the dialogue was the power of truth over the conscience of even a slaveholder. What I got… was a bold denunciation of slavery, and a powerful vindication of human rights,” Douglass writes in “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.”
While a young Douglass was enlightened by this newfound knowledge, literacy came at a cost.
“The reading of these documents enabled me to utter my thoughts, and to meet the arguments brought forward to sustain slavery; but while they relieved me of one difficulty, they brought on another even more painful than the one of which I was relieved. The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers,” Douglass explains.
Literacy opened the door to freedom for Douglass, who ultimately escaped the bondages of slavery and lived a long life as an abolitionist, orator, author, newspaper publisher, husband and father.
“Knowledge is the pathway from slavery to freedom,” Douglass said.
While being Black and learning was long discouraged or outright illegal, education became a way for those like Douglass to empower themselves and other African Americans, by working to effect change in the nation and world.
“Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and world better than you found it,” civil and children’s rights activist Edelman famously said.
African American Educational Ingenuity, Advocacy
Although paths toward education have proven difficult for many African Americans, Black leaders’ commitment to learning created training and career opportunities for people of color, while expanding U.S. economic and cultural power and influence.
African American labor advocates emphasize the strength, skill, beauty and boldness of Black workers.
This week, following ASALH’s celebration of “African Americans and Labor,” The Washington Informer will be highlighting Black labor leaders who used education as a pathway to justice and freedom.
From Booker T. Washington, to Nannie Helen Burroughs, Mary McLeod Bethune, Septima Poinsette Clark and Elizabeth Davis, former president of Washington Teachers Union (WTU) who died in April 2021, African American educational advocates emphasized the importance of learning and training— both academic and vocational— as paths to career opportunities and equity.
Today, African Americans make up about 13% of the U.S. labor force in comparison to white Americans who make up 77%, according to a 2022 report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. However, Black buying power is substantial and growing, currently at about $1.6 trillion.
While many Black people in the U.S. still face economic and educational disparities, and as President Donald Trump works to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion and the Department of Education, brave and brilliant African American labor and education advocates of the past can offer guidance for the future.
“Education and justice are democracy’s only life insurance,” the late labor and education advocate Burroughs said.