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He didn’t even know how to read or write. I can’t imagine how little guidance he got from his parents growing up. No wonder he ended up with the wrong crowd

LordDragonfang 5y ago
It's worth noting that the black illiteracy rate at the time he was growing up was around 10% [1]. Desegregation didn't happen until he had had already been in prison for close to a decade. There's a substantial chance his parents may not have known themselves. Not because of any fault of theirs, but because they may literally have not had the opportunity to. In fact, there's a high chance that he had relatives who literally were not allowed to learn - not only was Jim Crow still in living memory, there were people alive at that time who had been born into slavery. People forget how relatively recently the fight for (obvious) civil rights was. [1] https://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp https://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > It's worth noting that the black illiteracy rate at the time he was growing up was around 10% Nationally. Alabama’s general illiteracy rate around that time was close to double the national average (4.2% to the national 2.4% in 1960, for example [0]), so if the black:general ratio was similar to the national average (and I'd suspect it more likely was higher in the Deep South), you’d expect black illiteracy in Alabama to be near 20%. > not only was Jim Crow still in living memory “Living memory” suggests it was in the past, but there were people alive who had experienced it. Jim Crow was still a thing in Alabama for more than a decade after the time of his crime. And not just as some kind of neglected relic; not only were Jim Crow laws vigorously enforced, but new ones at both state and local levels were being adopted in Alabama into the 1960s. Now Jim Crow is “in living memory”, then it was an ongoing crime against humanity. [0] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1963/demo/p23-008.html https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1963/demo/p23-00...

LordDragonfang 5y ago

It's worth noting that the black illiteracy rate at the time he was growing up was around 10% [1]. Desegregation didn't happen until he had had already been in prison for close to a decade. There's a substantial chance his parents may not have known themselves. Not because of any fault of theirs, but because they may literally have not had the opportunity to. In fact, there's a high chance that he had relatives who literally were not allowed to learn - not only was Jim Crow still in living memory, there were people alive at that time who had been born into slavery. People forget how relatively recently the fight for (obvious) civil rights was. [1] https://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp https://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp

dragonwriter 5y ago
> It's worth noting that the black illiteracy rate at the time he was growing up was around 10% Nationally. Alabama’s general illiteracy rate around that time was close to double the national average (4.2% to the national 2.4% in 1960, for example [0]), so if the black:general ratio was similar to the national average (and I'd suspect it more likely was higher in the Deep South), you’d expect black illiteracy in Alabama to be near 20%. > not only was Jim Crow still in living memory “Living memory” suggests it was in the past, but there were people alive who had experienced it. Jim Crow was still a thing in Alabama for more than a decade after the time of his crime. And not just as some kind of neglected relic; not only were Jim Crow laws vigorously enforced, but new ones at both state and local levels were being adopted in Alabama into the 1960s. Now Jim Crow is “in living memory”, then it was an ongoing crime against humanity. [0] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1963/demo/p23-008.html https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1963/demo/p23-00...