Thompson, E. B, photographer. Negro soldier reading to boys who can't read. Camp Gordon, Ga. -18. Camp Gordon Georgia Dekalb County, None. [Between 1917 and 1918] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2011660972/.
This photo is an example of how a primary source document can serve as a resource for a unit, lesson, or historical period. It illustrates what motivates marginalized groups to engage in direct action in order to effect positive social change.
It informs students to think about the challenges of practicing freedom and understanding how it differs from independence. It intersects with gender and class marginalization as well. This photo illustrates how literacy is a powerful tool for both the practice of freedom and independence.
This photo tells a multitude of stories teachers could examine through questions:
- How does this relate to your own lives?
- How is the man reading a caregiver?
- How does a photo like this reflect the community around you?
- What is the impact of not having a community that is comfortable with literacy?
- How does a lack of literacy skills impede a community and civic engagement from improving lives?
The context of this photograph illustrates the importance of education to African Americans almost three generations after the Emancipation Proclamation (1863). In spite of the fact that a World War was occurring and these young men were about to go off to war, the ability to learn was still of paramount importance to them as the photograph clearly depicts. There is total engagement as the lone soldier reads to them, something many of them are unable to do.
- Why is education important?
- Why was educational access still limited/nonexistent for most African Americans two-and-a-half generations after slavery ended?
- What challenges did African Americans face after slavery?
- How does this photo transcend space, place, and time and remain relevant to today’s world?
- How does this image help us understand the concepts of freedom vs. independence, both individually and collectively?
- How does this photo connect to issues of sustainability?
Common Core State Standards
RI.11-12.1: Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain.
- This source addresses this standard by allowing both student and educator to see the importance of literacy education to emancipated Black troops during World War I. It also implies that educational access is clearly not available to all Blacks who desire it, as evidenced by the total engagement of the listeners to the reader.
RI.11-12.2: Determine two or more central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to provide a complex analysis; provide an objective summary of the text.
RI.11-12.3: Analyze a complex set of ideas or sequence of events and explain how specific individuals, ideas, or events interact and develop over the course of the text.
- The central ideas of this photo are education and access by an ethnic group as a result of historical denial. The photo also speaks implicitly to how certain marginalized groups are perceived as not engaged in the educational process, when the reverse is historically true as evidenced by the photograph.
RI.11-12.7: Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in different media or formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively) as well as in words in order to address a question or solve a problem.
- This can be used to connect to Brown v. The Board of Education of Topeka, KS (1954) and even Loving v. Virginia (1967) for access to inalienable rights as outlined in the Declaration of Independence.
- This photo is a resource that can foster engagement on many topics having to do with history and literature. Taken in 1917, it shows the recent history of the African American community and its evolution from slavery to emancipation to codified civil rights. One topic that comes to mind are the writings of Black women authors who emerged during Reconstruction and after: Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Pauline Hopkins, Alice Dunbar, and Ida B. Wells Barnett.
- It also alludes to the community building of African Americans after the Civil War. Rosenwald Schools began to emerge as African Americans learned to educate themselves through their community resources. Most White Americans are unaware that Blacks raised funds in their communities to educate themselves by building their own schools. Resources were not evenly distributed among white and Black communities. This impacted who went to school and who didn’t. This photo certainly speaks to resource availability for Blacks during this time period.
- Educators may use this photo to discuss the modern day Civil Rights Movement and the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. One cornerstone theme of the march was educational access.
- Discuss this photo in context with the Atlanta Compromise Speech given by Booker T. Washington in 1897. How might this image persuade Mr. Washington of the importance of universal literacy for all African Americans regardless of their occupation?
- This photo can also be used to encourage students who wish to be community leaders. How does this photo demonstrate empowerment and engagement?
- Teachers can ask students to draw comparisons: Which characters in the literary texts they have read have faced similar literacy challenges and to what effect?
- The Handmaid’s Tale collection
- The History within Toni Morrison’s Sula
- Twelve Years a Slave: Was the Case of Solomon Northup Exceptional?
- The primary challenges would most likely center on the discussion of race as the one of the focal points of the document. The topic of race and educational access for African Americans after emancipation can be volatile for communities uncomfortable about discussions of race in classrooms. There might be a challenge to any discussions of the “separate but equal” society that was created as a result of Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896), which impacted education specifically. This photo speaks directly to educational access at the community level.
Links to resources for approaching those topics
- The resources below are helpful in educating administrators and parents (community stakeholders) on the photo’s historical importance, as well as on societal change over time.
- https://www.afaccessionscenter.af.mil/
- https://www.theworldwar.org/learn/about-wwi/Black-soldiers-wwi
The use of contemporary photography to demonstrate American life provides for open discussion and is accessible to most students. It allows the students to create their historical interpretation of the photo’s space, place and time.
- The Civil Rights Movement Primary Source Set: Any of these images can be substituted for the 1917 photograph to demonstrate African American Commitment to education, empowerment and engagement.
- Cadentown Rosenwald School: This image of a Rosenwald School serves as evidence of community commitment to investing in education for African American children after emancipation.
- Firsthand Accounts from Black Soldiers in WWI: This site has first person accounts of how traveling to another country as Black men changed their perceptions of who they were and what they could be if given educational access and opportunities.
- https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/exhibits/reconstruction/section2/section2_school.html
- https://www.nps.gov/articles/african-americans-and-education-during-reconstruction-the-tolson-s-chapel-schools.htm
- https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/12/reconstruction-education-black-students-public-schools/675816/
- https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/educational-reconstruction-african-american-schools