Challenger: Literacy as a tool for liberation

Originally posted on the Challenger Newspaper website 8/7/25.

The great freedom fighter Frederick Douglass understood the power of reading.

“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”

Reading equals power, that is something that enslavers understood well. As early as 1740 through 1834, the colonizers passed anti-literacy laws. These laws were passed by the core of the confederacy: Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Virginia, North and South Carolina as a weapon of oppression. Reading opens up a whole new world of possibilities for a people’s condition and upward mobility. Reading unlocks knowledge which makes it nearly impossible to conquer and control those you wish to abuse. We again hear from Frederick Douglass:

“Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.”

The residue of this attack on liberation through literacy is found in the miseducation of Black children. The National Center for Education Statistics released the Nations Report Card for 2024 which would have made the authors of these anti-literacy laws leap for joy. According to this report only 17% of Black fourth graders scored at or above proficiency, which reflects a decade decline. In addition, Black eighth graders currently have a 14% proficiency rate. This is only slightly worse than the numbers for Black children in our region. These numbers would indicate that our society is in fact placing the majority of our children into educational and economic bondage.

Your ability to read will impact your ability to matriculate successfully through the education system. One of the best predictors for economic mobility is educational advancement. There is a direct correlation between income and health outcomes. The lack of reading proficiency is not only an educational concern, but also a public health crisis. The social determinants of health teach us that it is nearly impossible to address the high rates of diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, cancer, asthma and other chronic diseases, unless we address the education crisis which is rooted in basis literacy.

The Buffalo Center of Health Equity (https://buffalohealthequity.com/) and our partners have identified literacy as being one of the 5 inter-connective factors that must be addressed to bring health equity to our region. Literacy along with living wage employment, quality affordable housing, access to healthy food and primary care are all social factors that impact health outcomes. There are many reasons why our children are struggling with literacy, and it is not exclusively what happens in the classroom. While there needs to be reform in education, there also needs to an examination of the environment our children are forced to live in. Everything is connected and we need a comprehensive wholistic approach to creating a community of wellness for all children. How can children learn, if they are not fed properly? How can children learn when they witness their parents struggling to make ends meet? How can children learn, when they do not feel safe in their own community? How can children learn, when they do not feel loved and supported from those, they so desperately need it from?

BCHE is engaging in a process to help develop and implement community-based solutions to these factors. Our eighth annual Igniting Hope Conference on September 19-20 will be a working conference to bring people together to develop a plan for health equity. This includes bringing all of our children up to reading proficiency. Despite the fact teaching our people to read was illegal for generations. Even after it was legal, education was separate and unequal. However, we still produced lawyers, teachers, scientists, entrepreneurs and doctors, because we were determined to prosper in the midst of oppression. We did it because we came together to educate and elevate our people. Now we must do it again.