Beyond Reading, 'Riting, and 'Rithmetic: Black Elocutionary Education in Post-Emancipation America

Abstract:At the close of the U.S. Civil War, the future of Black citizenship remained an open question. Schoolrooms and peer-taught extracurricular lessons became critical training grounds for learning to speak, recite, and proclaim—the building blocks of 19th-century American citizenship. Lessons derived from Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria (95 C.E.), preserved in early American schoolbooks and pedagogical exercises, introduced thousands of formerly enslaved Black learners to classical rhetorical principles at a crucial historical juncture. Through elementary lessons in oral recitation, Black learners adapted classical imitatio to support practices of self-teaching and participatory civic engagement.