Reading Under Cover of the Veil: Oral and Textual Literacies in Antebellum America

This article examines the relationship between oral- and textual-literacy systems that existed during the antebellum period of United States history. I argue that African-American intellectual processes are more accurately understood as existing on a literacy continuum that reflects equality between oral literacy and textual literacy. A literacy continuum deconstructs the notion of the textual supremacy and assumes a mutually dependent relationship between the oral and the textual. Ultimately, it enables a reevaluation of oral practices as intellectual processes and systems of knowledge production.