Frederick Douglass was one of America’s most influential abolitionists, orators, writers, and statesmen. He learned to read as an enslaved person at 12 years of age. By age 16 he was providing classes to other enslaved people on Sunday afternoons and weekday evenings. He often said that reading is freedom.

We know in 2020 and 2021 our children had major learning loss due to COVID school closures. The impact of this on Black/African Americans and other children of color continues to be disproportionate. The literacy challenges are not new but exacerbated and now we are at a crisis level. Uncle Fred's Army© raises awareness and empowers us all to act.

I was motivated by a final project while pursuing my Master’s degree. I was moved with compassion and extremely overwhelmed by raw data proving Black and Brown students were not only still struggling with literacy, but there is now a full-blown literacy crisis!  During three short years, the majority of Black and Brown children who were Pre-K or Kindergarten students in 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, were far below proficient as third graders according to Tennessee TCAP (state test) score results.  

While I continuously pray for our State Department of Education, School Board, administrators, and classroom educators as they analyze such results, strategize on a plan, and develop the plan into programs to better serve Black and Brown children at school, the real raw truth is: that will have a null effect on our children who are living this crisis today. We have an urgency to act. Now!

In the book, The Narrative of The Life of Frederick Douglass  (2020 reprint), Douglass says, 

"I went to live with Mr. and Mrs. Auld, she very kindly commenced to teach me the A, B, C. After I had learned this, she assisted me in learning to spell words of three or four letters. Just at this point of my progress, Mr. Auld found out what was going on, and at once forbade Mrs. Auld to instruct me further, telling her, among other things, that it was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read.  [Auld] said, “If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell [equivalent to about forty-five inches]. A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master — to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. Now,” said he, “if you teach that nigger (speaking of myself) how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable and of no value to his master. As to himself, it could do him no good, but a great deal of harm. It would make him discontented and unhappy. These words sank deep into my heart, ... It was a new and special revelation, …I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty — to wit, the white man’s power to enslave the black man.”

This Douglass reflection revealed to me the problem, the pain, the potential, the promise, and the power of literacy freedom. And beyond these revelations, it unlocked passion! Frederick Douglass was resourceful and passionate about learning to read and write, then he shared what he learned with other Black people to empower them to read and write. We are facing these same issues of slavery by illiteracy today BUT we hold the keys to the shackles of illiteracy in our own hands. We are NOT POWERLESS, we are POWERFUL! 

The revelation: 

If I/we can read, regardless of the condition of the system, there’s no excuse for our children not to read. 

The question is: 

If I can read, why is my child (that is without any developmental delay) not able to read? 

The antidote:
As parents/family members or community members, the way to eradicate the poison of illiteracy is to become families and communities who are literate. 

The challenge: 

If I can read, as a parent/caregiver, I must spend the time at home (or on the go) to empower my child by teaching words and writing and reading books to my child. 

If I can read, as a community member, I must give back to the community and help a child or parent who cannot read.                                                                  

Reading Is Freedom!