sistaKaye  

A few years ago, a young white professor said to me “what happened to the black church?” I asked him what he meant by this question. He went on to say that for many years the black churches were at the forefront of the social and economic movements in the black communities. He said that reading and education played a large role in their advocacy for change. He said to me, “Did you guys stop the oral recitations during Easter services for the children? Believe or not that played a large role in the literacy education of black children.” His questions gave me to pause to think. I suppose the recitations had lost some of its prominence or relevancy in the black churches that I was associated with and so what? I thought. But, I couldn’t help but think of Maya Angelou’s recollection, in her autobiography of I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings,  of her saying her Easter speech at the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church in Arkansas at the age of six. What an important event this must have been in her life that she saw fit to include in her life story. I’m also reminded of Oprah Winfrey recollection of her speeches at Kosciusko Baptist Church in Mississippi, she recalls:

    
"And I believe that my first Easter speech, at Kosciusko Baptist Church, at the age of three and a   half, was the beginning. And that every other speech, every other book I read, every other time I spoke in public, was a building block. So that by the time I first sat down to audition in front of a television camera, and somebody said, "Read this," what allowed me to read it so comfortably and be so at ease with myself at that time, was the fact that I had been doing it a while. If I'd never read a book, or never spoken in public before, I would have been traumatized by it".

        While we may not believe in the religious thoughts behind Easter or the paganistic tradition of the Easter bunny and the hiding eggs, we should all believe in the idea that every black child should be literate and have the expectation that they should be reading at grade level.

            I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve seen African-American boys and girls: play with their braids, twist their locks, play with their cell phones, disrupt a classroom, and even physically assault another student just to deflect attention away from their inability to read the words on the page they’d been asked to read aloud.

            It’s heartbreaking to listen to excuses from adults as to why they cannot read the letter to you they’d received in their postal mailboxes. Even heartbreaking still is to watch grown men play with their glasses, rub their eyes or “bind the devil” rather than acknowledge that they cannot read the printed words of the Bible.

         Literacy is not an unattainable goal that’s reserved for a privilege few; it is for all of our children. Even those that are in Special Ed or resources classes can learn to read. Although at a slower rate, they must be given the expectation that they can and will learn.

      It is our parental responsibility that our children receive a quality education.  Too often we are far more concerned with grade retention and whether or not our children will graduate on time rather than expect retained knowledge. What a shame it is to see a student walk across a stage after twelve years, and receive a piece of paper and not an education.

      It our duty to our brown faces students and every other child we come in contact with that we become an advocate for literacy in our communities. We advocate by supporting our local libraries and bookstores. We advocate by taking our children consistently to the library. We advocate by making sure our children respect loaned materials from school or public libraries. We advocate by giving them speeches and poetry to recite. We advocate by making them read a section of the newspaper out loud. We advocate by supporting classroom instruction and reinforcing what has been taught earlier in class. We advocate by volunteering at adult literacy programs or enrolling in the programs ourselves to become stronger readers.  We advocate by showing them by our example that reading is fundamental! And sometimes we advocate for reading by mimicking the old women in the front pew who give encouragement at the speech recitals shouting,- “Read! Baby, Baby!”