Yesterday, DeRay Mckesson, the civil rights activist and Twitter firebrand best known for his work with the #BlackLivesMatter movement, posted a tweet with the hashtag #GenerationReader. "I'm a 3rd #GenerationReader," he wrote. "My great-grandmother could sign her name. Intergenerational trauma is real." Then he prompted the rest of the Internet: "What #GenerationReader are you?"
The post garnered narratives ranging from first-generation readers to people who felt reminded of the privilege that comes with having several generations of literacy in their family.
The narratives also bring to light some interesting illiteracy and proficiency data points. Federal education data shows trends for White and Black students.
In the United States today, just a third of all fourth-graders and less than 40 percent of 12th-graders are reading proficiently. For Black children, that figure is less than 20 percent. While that number is depressingly low and has remained relatively constant since the early 1990s, it’s better than it was a generation or two ago, when illiteracy was high.
@deray Im a 3rd #GenerationReader My grandparents taught themselves how to read after leaving school at 8yrs old to work in the cotton field
— SpiritualNubian (@NubianQueenIAm) September 24, 2015
After the Civil War, school enrollment among Blacks rose from just 10 percent in 1870 to 34 percent in 1880. In 1870, 80 percent of blacks were illiterate.