African Americans and the Classics

It has been fashionable for a long time to trash the classics -- the history, prose and poetry of Greece and Rome specifically. Yet the founders of the United States could almost all read Latin, and many read Greek as well, and they knew Greek and Roman history inside out. From this they learned what democracy is, and how republics rise and fall. There would be no United States had not a group of British Colonials in America fancied themselves as new Athenians and new Romans.
When African captives escaped from slavery, or, later, were freed, they knew that two things were vital to them: literacy, and the vote. Many former slaves craved the very classical knowledge that empowered the white man, and some used the wisdom of the classics in the further argument for their rights. It's more common to imagine these former slaves reading the Bible, but they craved -- and some got -- the education in the classics that white man wanted them not to have.
Finally, there's an important book about this, on a theme that is dear to me -- re-establishing the importance of the classics in American history. My friends who teach American literature or history will want to read this book. Other friends of a classical or historical bent will find it illuminating. Please ask your library to buy it. I'm sorry it's so expensive -- academic titles are criminally priced -- so you might need to have your library get it via interlibrary loan from another library that buys these kinds of books.

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