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Chapter 1: What historical context surrounds the Webster Blue Back Speller?
The year is 1783. The Revolutionary War is ending, the fighting on American soil finally tapering off. But what does it actually mean to be an American? If you asked anyone this question at the time, they more than likely wouldn't have a clear answer. Regular life is still chaotic. Classrooms, if they exist at all, are under-resourced, and the books students are using aren't even American.
They're British, teaching British geography, British history, British ways of thinking. People are still spelling the word color with a U. One ambitious school teacher looks around at all of this and decides this has to change. His name is Noah Webster.
Noah Webster is fascinating because he's this person who takes on, as an educator, the problem of literacy.
That's Imani Perry, author and professor of African American Studies at Harvard University.
And he complains about the classrooms being crowded and noisy and chaotic. And he is also sort of interested in trying to find a way to standardize American learning.
Webster saw how inconsistent education was. No standard curriculum. No shared set of books or processes. He thought we needed a system. So long before his dictionary made him a household name, Webster spends his own money to print a little blue book with an unwieldy title. It's called The First Part of the Grammatical Institute of the English Language. A title so bad that nobody ever used it.
They just started calling it The Blue Back Speller.
So he really creates this book that is built for an autodidact. It's a way to self-teach literacy. He writes The Blueback Speller for people to teach themselves to read or to aid teachers who are teaching students to read. You know, he really is a kind of key figure in American letters.
The idea that you would learn to read through reading is a leap. You know what I mean? To teach yourself reading through reading. So I have a copy with me. Could you describe it for me, though? Like, what does it do? What does it look like? How is it not a dictionary? Describe its use.
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Chapter 2: Who was Noah Webster and what was his vision for American education?
Entire generations grew up with it. Even Abraham Lincoln learned to read from its pages. It taught literacy, yes, but it was also shaping a new American language and identity. Webster uses the book to introduce simpler, more distinctly American spellings. He drops the U from humor and labor. Music and politics lose the extra K.
He once suggested that we start spelling daughter as D-A-W-T-E-R, which would have been nice, though that one didn't stick. But his larger idea does succeed. At one point, the blueback speller was second only to the Bible in copies sold. And it also, it's kind of like a Bible, like there's these tools and lessons built into it. Could you describe its size and the relevance of its size?
Yeah, I mean, it's wonderful to hold one because you realize it's pocket-sized. I mean, it was small enough to carry. The bluebacks baller could be carried with you wherever you wanted to go. It could literally fit into a jacket pocket or pants pocket or a small satchel. And so it was mobile. It was a tool that traveled with people.
Yeah, and it could be hidden.
It could easily be hidden, which was really important.
Important because it means the book could be used secretly by people who weren't supposed to have it. Enslaved people who were legally prohibited from learning to read. People, Amani says, that Webster never intended this book for at all.
Noah Webster is really trying to create an American identity that's based upon this notion of American democracy. He has this conception of what it means to be American that does not include black people in any measure. And that's evidenced throughout his work. And despite that fact, his blueback speller becomes something that is fundamental to African-American struggles for literacy.
From 99% Invisible and BBC Studios, this is a history of the United States in 100 Objects. I'm Roman Mars. Today, the Webster blew back Speller. How Black Americans transformed a school book not meant for them into a tool for their liberation. And how that little book became the foundation for a historic debate around what education is for and what it means to be free.
Before emancipation, in much of the slave-holding South, learning to read as an enslaved person came with brutal consequences. But the blueback speller was everywhere, so common that some enslaved people managed to get their hands on it anyway. People like Frederick Douglass.
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Chapter 3: How did the Blue Back Speller influence literacy and self-determination?
And so At the same time as there's this passion for education, there was also this sense of danger. And perhaps the most dramatic example of this is how frequently schools that served African Americans were burned to the ground. So there were school fires constantly.
And it's just a symbol of how, on the one hand, there's this passion for education, and on the other, there's this incredible sense of threat for many to the project of black schooling. And so the blueback speller is something that became a particularly prized possession because it meant that even if one wasn't in a classroom, you could still continue to pursue the lessons of literacy.
So people carried them around with them almost like amulets from working all day and then reading it by candlelight at night or taking breaks from the field. And so it had this sort of almost mystical quality to it.
This mystical book would play a transformative role in the lives of many Black Americans. But the reason we wanted to focus on the speller was because of the profound impact this book would have on two of the most powerful Black men in American history. Two men who become fierce rivals and whose disagreement essentially split the Black intellectual world in two. Booker T. Washington and W.E.B.
Du Bois. Their rivalry wasn't personal. It was a battle over the most urgent question in America. What does freedom actually mean? And how do you fight for it? Do you demand everything right now? Or do you work within the system, inch by inch, and wait for your moment?
Through their encounters with the blueback speller and the very different lessons each man took from it, you can trace the fault lines of a debate that is still very much alive today. Let's start with Booker T. Washington. He was born into slavery and later freed when news of emancipation reached the plantation where he and his family were held.
All Booker wants is to learn to read, but instead he has to work in a salt mine to help support his family. To make matters worse, he could see and hear happy children passing to and from school mornings and afternoons from where he was working in the mines. So he asks his mother for help.
His mother got her hands on a blueback speller for him, and he treated it as a kind of magical document. He taught himself to read with it, and it really shaped his life.
This is the very first book that Booker holds in his hand, and it changes the course of his life.
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Chapter 4: In what ways did the Blue Back Speller become a tool for enslaved people?
So Tuskegee becomes this institution through the leadership of Booker T. Washington that is a model of industrial education. So engineering, animal husbandry, agricultural work and the like. Things like learning how to build porches, appropriate ventilation for housing. How do you grow crops to appropriately feed the community? How do you take care of the land?
Not everyone agreed that these were the most important things to be learning. For many black families, it felt like settling. After generations of being denied literacy, why not go all in on classical education? Why not Latin, philosophy, literature, everything that had been kept out of reach for so long? But Washington was also thinking strategically.
In a country still shaped by Jim Crow, where reconstruction efforts had failed and been abandoned, he believed pushing for industrial education was more likely to be tolerated, less likely to provoke backlash.
Industrial education was conceived of as less threatening in many ways than classical education for Black Americans, because classical education was what the most elite white Americans, that kind of education they received. Booker T. Washington was advocating for this education that keeps people working in relationship to the land, right? That's part of why it's seen as less threatening.
Underneath that educational philosophy, there was a more controversial political idea. Washington believed that economic self-sufficiency had to come before the push for full civil rights.
He did not believe in immediately pressing for access to suffrage and other kinds of civil rights for African Americans, and instead focused on economic development, land acquisition, and the like.
And this philosophy? This philosophy was about to make him one of the most famous men in America. And the thing that would do it was a single speech delivered on a single afternoon in Atlanta in 1895. The city was hosting a World's Fair and had invited Booker T. Washington to speak.
By then, Washington had become a rare figure, a black leader that Southerners felt comfortable with, comfortable enough to put him on stage. picture it. The late afternoon sun is pouring into his eyes as he steps to the podium. Gilmore's band plays the Star-Spangled Banner, and then Dixie.
Thousands are staring at this Black man about to address a white Southern audience on a national stage, something that had likely never happened before in that part of the country.
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Chapter 5: How did the Blue Back Speller shape the educational experiences of Black Americans post-emancipation?
Years later, Du Bois writes about those students, their bright but mischievous faces, bare feet swinging from rough benches, hands wrapped around the speller.
And he writes about encountering these students and how extraordinary they are and how they're learning in a context where the nation is supposed to be engaged in this progress, but Black people are being held back. And then many years later, he returns to the school and finds that his prized pupil Josie has died. And so much of the promise has been snuffed out.
Du Bois doesn't actually say how Josie dies, but in the intervening years, her family has fallen apart. A brother in jail, a sister returning home with a child, and Josie carrying the weight of all of it. Working, working, working herself to death. And that loss clarifies something for Du Bois.
This story in some ways encapsulates why he becomes so resistant to his elder scholar, Booker T. Washington. Because what he shows is that even with all of the hard work, all of the possibility, all of the intellect and imagination, the brutality of the Jim Crow order is such that it destroys people's lives.
And without access to suffrage, without access to full civil and political rights, no matter how hard you work, you're going to wind up with these devastating consequences.
To Du Bois, this idea that Washington has, that economic progress and hard work will lead to racial equality, just isn't real. And Josie is proof of that.
He understands, to a certain extent, what Washington is trying to do, but he finds his acceptance of the constraints of Jim Crow unacceptable, given the consequences of those constraints.
He channels all of this into a scathing critique of Booker T. Washington in a chapter of The Souls of Black Folk, published in 1903. So he, you know, this is a really bold thing he does to write this book and to have this public criticism of, you know, this divide.
Yeah. I mean, you know, Du Bois, he has a chapter in The Souls of Black Folk called Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others, and he has a very direct and unflinching critique of Washington. In some ways, his personal reflections are a bit gentler than what he publishes.
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Chapter 6: What were the differing philosophies of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois?
And it's sort of a long winded way of getting to the point, which is that Booker T. Washington initiates a school building program with the support of Julius Rosenwald.
Julius Rosenwald had built his fortune as president of Sears Roebuck and Company. By the early 1900s, he was one of the wealthiest men in America.
And what that means is that they are actually physically building schools across the South for black people to attend. And this is transformative, right? And once the schools are built within a generation, the literacy gap is closed between black and white children.
Washington is complicated because on the one hand, he's known for his accommodationist posture, his willingness to forego advocacy of civil and political rights for African-Americans. But on the other hand, he is centrally responsible for the access to education for African-Americans across the South.
I mean, it strikes me like I don't want to reduce the works of two great men to just like basic psychology, but it seems like both of them are saying that the path of black liberation is my path. You know, like both of them are saying that in their own ways, you know?
I mean, and I think that's sort of, you know, these people who become extraordinary leaders have to have... Unbelievable conviction. And if you think one way to think about this is Washington, you know, right before he dies, he dies at age 59. He has a nervous breakdown. He's been carrying such extraordinary burdens trying to.
to sustain Tuskegee and trying to advocate in his own way for Black freedom. And one of the challenges was, is that, you know, after that Atlanta Compromise speech, many people misinterpreted him as saying that Black people should never have access to civil rights. I mean, even in that moment, he was just saying, we'll go a kind of go slow agenda.
And so there are people who were angry at him once he said, okay, well, now is the time to start to move towards access to civil rights. civil and political rights. So he was a man who carried a great deal of stress. And Du Bois, likewise, experienced, he had his passport taken away. He was penniless at various times of his life because of retaliation for his politics.
So these people endured so much stress. And in order to endure that kind of stress, I think they had to have an incredible courage of conviction. Part of what I think, though, is interesting about them is that besides their shared conviction, even though they had very different agendas, they also shared a real serious interest in Black education, which was really something that
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Chapter 7: How did the Blue Back Speller impact the lives of influential figures like Frederick Douglass?
Thank you so much for talking with me. I just enjoyed it so immensely.
Thanks. It was a great conversation. I appreciate you.
Imani Perry is the author of nine books, including the National Book Award-winning New York Times bestseller, South to America, and the inspiration for this episode, Black and Blues, how color tells the story of my people. In the dry desert of history books, Imani Perry's writing is like a cool sip of water. I cannot recommend her enough.
A History of the United States in 100 Objects is a production of 99% Invisible and BBC Studios. It's hosted and curated by me, Roman Mars. This episode was produced by Priscilla Alavi. Our other producers are Ellie Lightfoot and Brenna Daldorf. Our associate producer is Isaac Fisher. This series was edited by Annie Brown and Courtney Harrell. Mixing by Charlie Brandon King.
Fact-checking by Amy Bracken. Our theme song is by Swan Real. From 99% Invisible, our executive producer is Kathy Tu. From BBC Studios, our executive producers are Annie Brown and Courtney Harrell. Our production coordinator is Shan Pillay, and the production manager is Mabel Finnegan-Wright. Artwork by Stephan Lawrence.
99% Invisible is part of the SiriusXM podcast family, headquartered in beautiful Uptown, Oakland, California. And BBC Studios is headquartered in beautiful White City, West London. If you want to get in touch or have an object for us to consider, email us at 100objects at 99pi.org.
Thank you.
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