Unearthing Hidden Literacy

In the story Unearthing Hidden Literacy by Lillie Gayle Smith, she expresses her personal journey to comprehending the black woman’s literacy. The author points out many of her view points on life and brings up many of her experiences such as picking cotton in Alabama and that she felt she should never tell anyone about the experience because it was not something that she was proud of. The author also brings up the example of a class that she took and tells how she experienced a great amount of sexism within the class because professor tended to congratulate the men when they would speak up in class but disregard the women. When the women did speak up in class the professor turned to a man within the class to confirm what the female has just implied. This was a obvious case of sexism that I personally find disturbing because the by the professor’s actions he obviously felt that the men in the class were more capable of making decisions than women were in life. This opinion has never been proven to be true as there are many women who are smarter than men and the professor of that class failed to let those women shine and show their true abilities. I also appealed to the idea of these women leaving the class after they realized what was happening They felt that they did not have to stand nor pay for education that was biased in any way and turned to a class that could cater to more of their interest and ability as women which was the black women’s literacy class. This class was a great choice for those group of women because they were better able to understand themselves and the great deal of good a black literate women has done to the world, which implies that any woman who was intelligent enough to take a stand has many good consequences and not always seen in a negative light or had to be reaffirmed by a male.