When I Can Read My Title Clear

". . . a distinctive volume revealing yet again America's often-contradictory dance with freedom and the concepts of equality and inalienable rights. It provides a forceful background for understanding contemporary literacy issues and, more generally, the status of schooling and intellectual pursuits in what some now call–a mere 130 years after emancipation–a post-literate culture."—Chicago Tribune

". . . a valuable addition to the study of southern history and a pioneer work on slave literacy."—The North Carolina Historical Review

"This poignant and notable study examines not only why antebellum blacks so valued literacy, but how literacy played a central role in both the black church and in political resistance."—The Virginia Quarterly