100 Objects #5: Blue Back Speller

Why did an ordinary schoolbook become so treasured that enslaved people risked their lives to possess it?

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Roman Mars?

  This fall, LL Bean is celebrating the moments people look forward to all year. The first school drop-off, the first sweater-weather day, and the first chilly evening around the fire pit. For over 100 years, LL Bean has been part of these traditions: crunching leaves in Maine-made Bean Boots, cheering from the sidelines in Scotch plaid flannel, and walking the dog in a rugged field coat. So grab the layers and people you love and get outside. Visit llbean.com to shop the fall collection. LL Bean: Be an Outsider. Whoever says saving money is hard doesn't know that new customers who bundle and save with Progressive save hundreds. Because switching your home and auto insurance is better than cutting down on the things

• 0:44Roman Mars?

  you love, like those iced lattes that help you get ready to face the day. So switch your home and auto to Progressive and see if you could save and keep stepping away. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states. 99% Invisible is presented by Acura. Curating and designing the perfect experience takes meticulous craft, an obsession with detail, and a love for innovation. Just like museum designers, Acura carefully considers every detail to curate the most engaging, exhilarating, and rewarding experience for drivers.

• 1:26Roman Mars?

  That craft isn't always something you can see, but it's something you'll feel: that flutter in your heart when the engine roars. Every Acura is designed with deliberate intention around how people actually use the vehicles. And that is precision-crafted performance. 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 ask 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.

• 2:10Roman Mars?

  They're British, teaching British geography, British history, British ways of thinking. People are still spelling the word "color" with a "U." One ambitious schoolteacher looks around at all of this and decides, "This has to change." His name is Noah Webster.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  Noah Webster is fascinating because he's this person who takes on, as an educator, the problem of literacy.

• 2:36Roman Mars?

  That's Imani Perry, author and professor of African American Studies at Harvard University.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  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.

• 2:54Roman Mars?

  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."

• 3:23Speaker 01

  So he really creates this book that is built for an autodidact. It's a way to self-teach literacy. He writes "The Blue Back 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.

• 3:46Roman Mars?

  The idea that you would learn to read through reading is a leap. You know what I mean? To teach yourself-

• 3:54Speaker 01

  How to read.

• 3:55Roman Mars?

  Reading through reading?

• 3:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:57Roman Mars?

  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? Let's describe its use.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. It has some sort of basic phonetic lessons, entry points to pronunciation, short words. And then in the midst of it, these sort of moral lessons written. So it really is like a guide to learning to read and the way that later generations, you know, we had books like Hop on Pop. But in that period, it was the closest thing. And there's so many of them still around because there were so many printed once upon a time.

• 4:34Roman Mars?

  Within a few years, The Blue Back Speller becomes one of the most widely-used schoolbooks in the country. 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.

• 5:13Roman Mars?

  At one point, The Blue Back Speller was second only to the Bible in copies sold. And it also is 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?

• 5:27Speaker 01

  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 Blue Back Speller could be carried with you wherever you wanted to go. It could literally fit into into a jacket pocket or pants pocket or a small satchel. And so it was mobile. It was a tool that traveled with people.

• 5:52Roman Mars?

  Yeah, and it could be hidden.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  It could easily be hidden, which was really important.

• 5:57Roman Mars?

  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.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  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.

• 6:28Roman Mars?

  Yeah.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  And that's evidenced throughout his work. And despite that fact, his Blue Back Speller becomes something that is fundamental to African-American struggles for literacy.

• 6:44Roman Mars?

  From 99% Invisible and BBC Studios, this is A History of the United States in 100 Objects. I'm Roman Mars. Today, the Webster Blueback Speller: how Black Americans transformed a schoolbook 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.

• 7:20Roman Mars?

  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.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  Part of what is powerful about it is if we think about someone like Frederick Douglass, who is enslaved and fundamentally teaches himself to read using the Blueback Speller.

• 7:53Roman Mars?

  Douglass would go on to become one of the most influential writers and thinkers in American history. He'd become an advisor to Abraham Lincoln. But when he first encounters the Blueback Speller, he's still enslaved, and learning to read is dangerous.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  In the context of enslavement, having one of these spellers for someone who's enslaved could put you at enormous risk of maiming, of death, of being sold. And if we know that... Here's Noah Webster, who created this. He's someone who doesn't consider a person like Douglass as part of the American body, right, of not part of the relevant community of who Americans are.

• 8:34Roman Mars?

  Noah Webster opposed the institution of slavery. But even still, the idea that this book was for Americans meant it inherently excluded enslaved people from its intended readership.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  And yet Douglass teaches himself and through teaching himself, frees himself.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  And he and countless other black people take on that blueback speller, insist upon becoming part of the literate American public, irrespective of what Noah Webster thought of black people or intended. And that is this remarkable kind of motif through African American history of existing in the terms of the United States, understanding being marginal and excluded, and fighting to be recognized as part of that public, sometimes at great risk. So this drive for literacy was a kind of remarkable passion

• 9:34Speaker 01

  and conviction to be free in ways that you might not be free in body, but you could be free in mind.

• 9:49Roman Mars?

  So the blueback speller offered a kind of mental survival during slavery. Then emancipation comes. And suddenly, education isn't just about being free in the mind anymore. So how does this little blue book change what comes next? Like, what does it represent after emancipation?

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, so we know that one of the first things that the formerly enslaved, that the freed people wanted to do, was to go to school or to be educated. And one of the early ways we see this is black soldiers in the Civil War who become literate and immediately begin writing letters to Lincoln, saying not only are they hopeful for land with their freedom, but there have to be schools. We see it in the contraband camps in the Civil War, where there are even photographs of people holding blueback spellers, of black people who have fled behind Union lines and are learning to read in the midst of battlefields. And then, after emancipation, these schools that open up,

• 10:51Speaker 01

  there are students who range from, you know, tiny children to octogenarians, just passionate for literacy. And this is, of course, because... Literacy is tied to freedom because the idea was that literacy made someone unfit to be a slave. And so then to be free necessarily meant to become literate. And so you can imagine that on a day-to-day basis, even with these new rights, the very idea of Black people reading was threatening to many white Southerners. And so at the same time, there's this passion for education, there was also this sense of danger.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  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 Blue Back 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. You know, so people carried them around with them, almost like amulets, from working

• 12:16Speaker 01

  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.

• 12:26Roman Mars?

  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 Blue Back Speller and the very different lessons each

• 13:10Roman Mars?

  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.

• 13:20Roman Mars?

  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.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  His mother got her hands on a Blue Back Speller for him, and he treated it as, you know, as a kind of magical document. He taught himself to read with it, and it really shaped his life.

• 14:01Roman Mars?

  This is the very first book that Booker holds in his hand, and it changes the course of his life.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  There's this trajectory from his mother finding this book for him, and he thinking that this is sort of the greatest possible, you know, object that he could have, and then becoming ultimately the most powerful black man in the United States.

• 14:25Roman Mars?

  After teaching himself to read using the Blue Back Speller, he attends night school after working in the salt mines all day. Then in 1872, at age 16, he makes his way to Hampton Institute, which is one of the first schools established for African Americans in Virginia.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  He has to walk, I think, it's something like 500 miles to get to Hampton Institute, you know, so this passion, this drive for education is extraordinary. And then he becomes the first principal, and then later on, what would be the president of Tuskegee Institute, now Tuskegee University.

• 15:00Roman Mars?

  On the 4th of July of 1881, Washington arrived at Tuskegee as its first principal. But the school existed in name only. The state of Alabama had allocated just $2,000 a year to pay the teachers. There was no land, no buildings, no equipment, just some cash and an idea on paper. So Washington shows up and just starts teaching. At first, out of a one-room shanty. It was in such disrepair that whenever it rained, one of the students would have to hold an umbrella over Washington's head for the rest of the lesson. Shortly after that, Washington borrows some money to buy an abandoned 100-acre former

• 15:41Roman Mars?

  plantation, and he and the students build Tuskegee with their own hands, brick by brick.

• 15:49Roman Mars?

  As in, they literally make the bricks themselves. But it isn't easy. The first brick kiln fails, then the second, then the third. At one point, he pawns his watch for $15 just to keep the experiment going. For Washington, it's a lesson in the dignity of labor. And it gets to his core idea about education. Instead of teaching the humanities, he thought education should be focused on giving Black people practical skills, a philosophy known as industrial education.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  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?

• 16:47Roman Mars?

  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.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  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.

• 17:48Roman Mars?

  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.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  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.

• 18:14Roman Mars?

  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 in 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,

• 18:59Roman Mars?

  something that had likely never happened before in that part of the country.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  This famous or infamous speech that he delivers in 1895, in which he says that Black and white Americans can be as separate as fingers on a hand, and implicitly foregoes advocacy for civil and political rights, and instead encourages Black Americans to cast down their buckets where they were and don't worry about how their rights are being systematically denied them in the South.

• 19:38Roman Mars?

  A reporter who was there wrote it up for "The New York World", and he replays this moment where Washington lifts up his hand, his hand representing society. He spreads his fingers apart and says to the audience, "In all things purely social, we can be as separate as fingers on a hand", as in, "White people and Black people don't need to mix. We can stay segregated and still work towards the same goal." It was a simple and effective metaphor for the fiction of separate but equal. And white America loved it. It gave them exactly what they wanted. The comfort of segregation without the guilt. Social separation without moral responsibility.

• 20:23Roman Mars?

  And the crowd goes into what the reporter calls a delirium of applause. Hats in the air, handkerchiefs waving, everyone on their feet.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  The speech is a rousing success in mainstream America. Because in many ways, you know, it's 1895. So it's some years past the end of Reconstruction, which completely ended by 1877. But in the intervening years, Jim Crow is becoming more deeply entrenched in the US South and really in many ways across the country. And by that, I mean not just segregated facilities, but also segregated forms of employment, really control of the labor of African Americans. The beginning of we see sort of fundamentally unequal

• 21:16Speaker 01

  experiences with relationship to law enforcement and the like. And so it is a speech that has this sort of mythology to it that if black Americans just work really hard and put their heads down and stop pushing against the way the society is becoming increasingly more oppressive and restrictive, then things will get better. And it not only lets the South off the hook, but it lets the federal government off the hook, which is in some ways has already abandoned African Americans in the advocacy for the rights that they were granted after the Civil War.

• 21:58Roman Mars?

  You might have learned about this speech in school. It becomes known as the Atlanta Compromise. Because compromise is what many people hear in it, whether or not that's all Washington intended.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  I mean, it absolutely didn't represent the totality of Washington's thought. And he certainly, in many covert ways, advocated for organizations that supported civil and political rights for African Americans. There's no question that he was maneuvering politically in public and behaving differently in private.

• 22:33Roman Mars?

  The speech makes Washington a national figure. Practically overnight, he becomes the most powerful black man in the United States. But it also opens a kind of schism. And Washington is about to meet an opponent who would challenge him over what freedom should look like. Someone unwilling to compromise. Someone ready to fight.

• 23:05Roman Mars?

  This episode is presented by Air France. Air France Business Cabin offers comfort from start to finish. Enjoy priority check-in and boarding, followed by access to peaceful lounges. Onboard, savor menus created by renowned French chefs, paired with wines and champagne selected by Smollet. Stay connected with free high-speed Wi-Fi. Then unwind in a fully adjustable lie-flat bed with a mattress topper developed with Sofitel My Bed, a signature touch of French hospitality. The art of travel elevated, because Air France Business Cabin goes further in every detail to make your journey exceptional. This fall, LL Bean is celebrating the moments people look forward to all year.

• 23:50Roman Mars?

  The first school drop-off, the first sweater-weather day, and the first chilly evening around the fire pit. For over 100 years, LL Bean has been part of these traditions. Crunching leaves in Maine-made Bean Boots, cheering from the sidelines in Scotch plaid flannel, and walking the dog in a rugged field coat. So grab the layers and people you love and get outside. Visit llbean.com to shop the fall collection. LL Bean: Be an Outsider. Whoever says saving money is hard doesn't know that new customers who bundle and save with Progressive save hundreds. Because switching your home and auto insurance is better than cutting down on the things you love, like those iced lattes that help you get ready to face the day.

• 24:32Roman Mars?

  So switch your home and auto to Progressive and see if you could save and keep sipping away. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states.

• 24:50Roman Mars?

  If you're a small business, the right hire can be make or break. Indeed sponsored jobs gets you quality candidates when you need them most. Join the 3.3 million employers worldwide that use Indeed to connect with quality talent that fits their needs. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast. That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now, then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 25:25Roman Mars?

  Booker T. Washington's ideas about black education are about to meet their challenger, another intellectual heavyweight named W. E. B. Du Bois. Du Bois also has a philosophy whose origins can be traced back to the Blue Back Speller. Only his experience with the book comes much later in life because Du Bois is born into a much different world than Booker T. Washington. Well, I want to bring in another historic figure, young W. E. B. Du Bois. He reads this speech after it gets published. Where is Du Bois in his life at this point? A little bit of his upbringing and how he sort of becomes an educator.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, so part of what's really interesting about Du Bois is he and Washington are often positioned at odds and as they were. But it's important to remember that, you know, Washington is is sort of almost two decades older than Du Bois.

• 26:16Roman Mars?

  It's actually only 12 years that separate Washington and Du Bois, but those dozen years between slavery and not slavery are a seismic shift.

• 26:25Speaker 01

  Washington, you know, is born in slavery. Du Bois is born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts and has a very different kind of coming of age, you know, doesn't have to walk 500 miles to get to school. And he is, you know, well educated, a member of a very small black community in the Berkshires, where he's aware of being different and made aware in elementary school when he gives, tries to give a valentine to a little girl who rejects it. And this becomes his moment of racial awareness, a racial reckoning, but understood as extremely bright and talented. And when he graduates from high school, his mother dies when he's

• 27:10Speaker 01

  seventeen. And so, members of the local community put money together and sent him to Fisk University, which is the school of classical education for African Americans at the time in Nashville. He wanted to go to Harvard undergraduate. He winds up at Fisk, and Fisk is an extraordinary experience for him. It's an outstanding institution. And also, for him, the first time, he's around large numbers of African Americans. And these are really people who are amongst, you know, the best and brightest at that moment.

• 27:43Roman Mars?

  Mm hmm.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  He's at Fisk, and in the summer after his sophomore year, as many students at historically black colleges at the time do, he finds a school to teach at during the summer. This was a sort of routine process. And so, if we say, in Nashville in general, he learns about what Jim Crow looks like, right? A comprehensive system of segregation, very different from the kind of racism that he experienced in Great Barrington. So, once Fisk is this remarkable place that he falls in love with, and also the place where he really understands what life is like for the majority of African Americans. So, there's

• 28:27Speaker 01

  one level, but Nashville is a city. You know, in the summer, he goes out to rural Tennessee. Very different kind of landscape. People are really living at a subsistence level.

• 28:40Roman Mars?

  And it is here, in this rural village, that the boys will have a transformative experience with the Blue Back Speller, as a young teacher with a room full of black children in front of him.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  And he teaches at this school, and he talks about beautiful children with these bright and curious minds. And he describes them sitting in front of the Blue Back Speller and teaching them.

• 29:07Roman Mars?

  Years later, Du Bois writes about those students. Their bright but mischievous faces, bare feet swinging from rough benches, hands wrapped around the speller.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  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.

• 29:46Roman Mars?

  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.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  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.

• 30:41Roman Mars?

  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.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  He understands, to a certain extent, what Washington is trying to do, but he finds his acceptance...

• 31:01Speaker 01

  Of the constraints of Jim Crow unacceptable, given the consequences of those constraints.

• 31:09Roman Mars?

  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.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  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. But I think what he's trying to do is give voice to what a lot of black intellectuals and activists and organizers are saying, which is what Washington is saying cannot be seen as speaking for black people writ large and certainly not the black leadership class, as it were.

• 32:05Roman Mars?

  I think you can sum up Du Bois's critique like this. He believes that Booker T. Washington, by encouraging black Americans to just focus on their own skills and financial independence and to wait for civil rights, to go slow, that Washington is asking them to surrender something fundamental, their self-respect. For Du Bois, the fight for civil rights and the vote cannot be pushed off into the future. How can someone defend his rights as a landowner or a business owner if he has no political power to do so? And he thinks Washington's focus on industrial education is part of the problem. Instead of practical skills, Du Bois thinks that education for black Americans should be broader, a classical education, Greek, Latin, literature, philosophy, the kinds

• 32:48Roman Mars?

  of subjects that could train a class of black scholars, writers, and leaders. He called this idea "The Talented Tenth."

• 32:56Speaker 01

  Du Bois gets a lot of criticism for His concept of the talented 10th that is also in that book in which he says essentially, you know, there's 10% of any community that are going to function as the leadership class and those people in the black community should have access to, you know, the highest level of education and classical education in particular. And on the one hand, while I think some of the critique is understandable, I think, given the context, it's important to keep in mind that if in general in the society, people were saying, you know, black people should only have access to industrial education,

• 33:36Speaker 01

  which really was the norm, he's saying in this, at least 10% of the black population should have access to higher order education. Because if not, then who is going to be in the rooms with white elites to advocate for black people, right? And so, so it sounds elitist and in some ways it was, you know, and Du Bois, I think we can say in some ways was an elitist, but he's really trying to say we should not exclude black people writ large from any sector of the society. And that was a bold statement.

• 34:11Roman Mars?

  Du Bois also thinks there are consequences to Washington's accommodationist beliefs. He sees a direct line between the Atlanta Compromise speech and what came after. Just a year after Washington announced that the races could be as separate as fingers on a hand, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy versus Ferguson, making separate but equal the law of the land.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  Du Bois thinks that Washington and the Atlanta Compromise speech gives up something that he had no right to give up, right? And sort of presented it as though black Americans were willing to accommodate exclusion and therefore that that sort of allowed for Plessy versus Ferguson to be decided without any anxiety on the part of the court. Now, I think the reality is that regardless of what Washington had said, Plessy would likely have been decided the way that it was. I think a better argument would be that Washington, you know, saw the way the wind was blowing

• 35:18Speaker 01

  and, and sort of said what he needed to say in order to continue to get financial support given the way the society was, was turning.

• 35:28Roman Mars?

  When Du Bois publishes The Souls of Black Folk in 1903, it lands hard. The book is reprinted twice in its first two months. In some ways, it helps cement a certain kind of legacy for Booker T. Washington, who is mostly remembered for his accommodationism. But Amani says he's actually much more complicated than that because of what he's doing behind the scenes with money he got from white donors, particularly when it comes to public education for black children in the Jim Crow South.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  So, black students have fewer schools to attend. They often have shorter school terms and they get much less money than schools for white students. Many places, particularly rural places, don't have access to public schools at all. And southern states do not require schools that have been slated for white students to admit black students, even if they don't have an access to a local school. 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.

• 36:38Roman Mars?

  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.

• 36:47Speaker 01

  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. So, 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.

• 37:30Roman Mars?

  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?

• 37:44Speaker 01

  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 sustain Tuskegee and trying to advocate in his own way for black freedom. And one of the challenges was is that, you know, after the Atlanta Compromise speech, many people misinterpreted him as saying that black people should never have access to civil rights.

• 38:26Speaker 01

  And 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 and political rights. So he, he, he was a man who carried a great deal of stress. And Du Bois likewise, you know, 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.

• 39:07Speaker 01

  Part of what I think though is interesting about them is that besides their, their shared conviction, right, even though they had very different agendas, they also shared a real serious interest in black education, which was really something that, you know, in the early 20th century, black intellectuals across the board were centrally interested in educational issues and not just, you know, higher education, but K-12 education, education of kids was seen as a central concern. And so even in the midst of their debate, they're trying to think about how do we prepare

• 39:49Speaker 01

  children for a world, for a future that does not yet exist, but a future that they deserve. And that shared conviction is something that I think of as pretty remarkable for men of that stature.

• 40:05Roman Mars?

  I mean, it's almost as like, Du Bois, you know, born, you know, a generation later in a different environment. If he's not. Doing like if kids aren't freaking me out, then kids aren't doing their job. Like, you know, you mean, like, if kids aren't like advocating for something different? Like, that's what progress is. That's the point of progress. This is that's as natural as anything.

• 40:25Speaker 01

  I agree with that, but you know, even today, right? Young people start to push for things outside of the conventions of, you know, mainstream politics and older people like, you know, get really rough on young people who are bringing in new ideas and unwilling to just go along. There's a lot to learn from that story if we're willing to really pay attention to things like, like what you just said, that young people are bringing in new ideas.

• 40:54Roman Mars?

  Yeah, that's their job, as far as I'm concerned. Like, they have one job. To continue progress.

• 40:59Speaker 01

  It's worth noting that Du Bois continued to sort of push very hard at the limits of black politics all the way until his death in 1963, you know, and is frequently on the outs with those who are most powerful and.

• 41:17Roman Mars?

  Yeah, so much so that he ends up in Africa and everything like.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  He ends up in exile in Ghana at the end of his life. Yeah, he's a Pan-Africanist. He's a socialist. He, you know, one of the founders, first of the Niagara Movement, which is the precursor to the NAACP, one of the founders of the NAACP, the first editor of the NAACP organ, The Crisis. And the NAACP is a multiracial civil rights organization initially. And he pushes that organization so hard at various moments that he is repeatedly fired and then brought back in. And at times it's because, you know, of his position where he becomes a sort of a very

• 42:04Speaker 01

  assertive Pan-Africanist, at times because of his positions on capitalism. At times it's because he is, he's just so outspoken about American racism. And so that he takes on Washington as a young man in some ways is an indication of who he will be over the course of the rest of his life.

• 42:35Roman Mars?

  So I want to get back to this, the Blue Back Speller. In many ways, was the initial seed for Black formal education. What does it mean that the same object was the root for both Booker T. Washington and for W. E. B. Du Bois's intellectual formations?

• 42:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I'm so taken by the fact that the same object, it's Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois, for whom the Blue Back Speller matters. It's also Frederick Douglass, you know, like most famous abolitionists. Also, George Washington Carver, this brilliant scientist and artist who does all this transformative work at Tuskegee and also like really saves the land in Alabama after it has been so destroyed by the cotton economy with crop rotation techniques. They all start with this book.

• 43:34Speaker 01

  It's a really interesting story about what access can do, right? So that just access to literacy, having a tool to access literacy, opens up these worlds for these extraordinary thinkers, right? Who might otherwise not have had that kind of access. It also says something about the power of the intellect and the depth of their convictions to be learned people who do meaningful work, right? So that holding this book close tells you something about their character and tells you something about resiliency.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  And I, I get very emotional and inspired, you know, reflecting on what it meant to, you know, carry this book in one's pocket and that being understood as the key to personal transformation, but also community-wide, social transformation. And so I think that word "key" is really significant because it's not just a key for people to learn to read, but it is a key, I think, for us to understand something about the building of the African-American intellectual and political tradition.

• 44:53Roman Mars?

  That gets to something bigger, because this isn't about a book anymore. It's about what people can do with a tool, once they claim it for themselves.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  There's something quintessentially American about the Blue Back Speller. You know, what more kind of democratic instrument than an object that you can use to make yourself literate? And it opens up this world of possibility. But it's also quintessentially American in the sense that its creator, Noah Webster, did not consider Black Americans as part of the American project. That's also quintessentially American. And then the other layer of something that's quintessentially American is Black Americans taking that which is not intended for us and reinterpreting it in a way that not only includes Black Americans, but actually then becomes something different in the hands

• 45:46Speaker 01

  of Black Americans, right? It becomes not only a way to learn to read, but actually a tool for entry into all kinds of arenas where they had not been contemplated.

• 46:00Roman Mars?

  No one understood this better than Frederick Douglass, a man who had already done exactly this kind of reinvention with that little blue book. But what Douglass learned to do with the Speller, to take something that wasn't meant for him and transform it into something liberating. He would ultimately do that on a much larger scale.

• 46:19Speaker 01

  Douglass actually does something with what it means to be American that's really profound. You know, when he becomes an abolitionist, most abolitionists at that time really rejected the US Constitution. They said, this is a slaveholding document, so we shouldn't consider it something meaningful. And Douglass says, no, no, let's reinterpret the Constitution. Let's hold on to its principles and yet interpret it to actually be a document that supports the concept of all men being created equal. And then he says, and actually, all human beings created equal. Because Douglass is also this sort of foundational feminist. And I think there's an analogy there with the Blue Back Speller. So, you know, here's a society that does not consider Black people part of the body

• 47:03Speaker 01

  Politic. Here's a foundational document that does not, not only does not consider black people, but has the racist three fifths compromise in it. But Douglas reinterprets that document to expand the conception of who should be considered American. There's something that you get about the American story through the Blue Back Speller that we find repetitions of in all these different kinds of ways that I do think of as, as a really distinctive part of the black American story.

• 47:46Roman Mars?

  Thank you so much for talking with me. I just enjoyed it so immensely.

• 47:50Speaker 01

  Thanks. It was a great conversation. I appreciate you.

• 47:55Roman Mars?

  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 a 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.

• 48:26Roman Mars?

  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 Alavie. Our other producers are Ellie Lightfoot and Brenna Dahl Dorff. 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 Pelé, and the production manager is Mabel Finnegan Wright. Artwork by Stefan Lawrence.

• 49:11Roman Mars?

  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 [email protected].