You Can Read!

Before he was married Pa had fought to help free the colored people. He never believed that slavery was right and it taint. Pa never had much of a chance himself and he never learned to write his name. For generations we've been poor people and before me there was none in the family could read.

Take Pa though; he'd been glad of a little schoolin' if there'd been any way for him to get it. I'll tell you why I know in a minute. Pa sent me to a four month's school that cost him a dollar a month. They wasn't free schools in them days and only a few got learning. But it was in me to learn more then I could get in them four months.

    - from Ida Allen in American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940

On this scrapbook page...

  • Was it a struggle to learn to read, perhaps because you worked more often than you went to school? Did you read to escape your everyday life?
  • Read one or more books published before or during your childhood.
  • Learn a recitation (from a book, poem, or essay) for your teacher or a family visitor. In character, explain why you chose to memorize this particular piece and how you found it. What does this reading reveal about you?
  • Talk about yourself as a reader. Tell the story of how you learned to read.  What else do you like to read and why? What do these books reveal about your times?

"Schoolhouse, South Pass City, Wyoming" (1910) from Built in America: Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) and the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER)

Think about...

At the turn of the century, children had very different reading experiences and access to books. For some, the McGuffey's Readers from school were their only books. These contained selections from great novelists, poets, historians and orators. Students worked individually to complete lessons in seven books after which they graduated. Other children had many books at home or lived near a public library.

Andrew Carnegie founded 1679 new libraries in the United States. Search on Carnegie in Detroit Publishing Company: Touring Turn of the Century America to see images of both the libraries he funded and the steel mills he owned, where workers did a 12-hour shift seven days a week.



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"A Trek Through Time at the Ohio Village: Schoolhouse" from the Ohio Historical Society