Adult Literacy Reform Through a Womanist Lens

Framing Robinson’s Work Within Womanist Discourse

Robinson arguably perceived the world through a womanist way of knowing. Alice Walker’s formulation of the womanist construct (1983) shifted thinking about the influence of race and gender discrimination on how people learn and how they respond to knowledge. Following Walker, African American writers and scholars proposed womanism as a corrective or alternative to the feminist movement, which they argued had paid scant attention to the social and economic needs of women of African heritage or to discourse on their contributions (Hudson-Weems, 1993, 2007; Ntiri, 1993, 1998, 2007; Collins, 1996; Colin, 2010; Tsuruta, 2012). They charged that feminism as a movement has routinely prioritized gender or sexism over racism and that, as scholarship, it has a history of privileging interpretations of female oppression worldwide over those of structured inequalities of race in the United States and elsewhere. Typically, what occurs is that “mainstream scholarship canonize[s] a few black women as spokespersons for the group and then refuse to listen to any but these select few” (Collins, 2000, p. vii). The result is that many intellectually creative African American thinkers and doers are mostly stifled. The concept of womanism is the fruit of their alienation and exclusion.

Various derivatives of this concept have been put forward, but possibly, the most useful is given by Phillips. Outlining a racialized gender discourse and distinguishing womanism from feminism, Phillips (2006) defines womanism as

a social change perspective rooted in black women’s and other women of color’s everyday experiences and every day methods of problem solving in everyday spaces, extended to the problem of ending all forms of oppression for all people, restoring the balance between people and the environment/nature, and reconciling human life with the spiritual dimension. (p. xx)

In short, womanism is a conceptual framework for visualizing how race, class, and gender are linked and how they link with other systems of power and inequality.

As a womanist, Robinson demonstrated this attitude of social change and anti-oppression in her community, her classroom, and her life. Womanism concerns itself with people of color, unlike feminism, which focuses on sexism and women’s experiences. Robinson emphasized educating men, women, and families. As noted by Phillips (2006), a womanist is “triply concerned with herself, other black women, and the entire black race, female and male—but also all humanity” (p. xxiii); Robinson demonstrated an unfaltering commitment to the greater African American community by fostering political activism and global consciousness within southern communities and increasing ordinary people’s access to literacy and civic literacy. Finally, womanism promotes social transformation through common sense and humanistic attributes that oppose oppression and racism and embrace peace and harmony, dialogue and hospitality, and spirituality and self-help. These are the very attributes that define Robinson’s work in the 1950s in the south.

This new frame of reference helps us address Robinson’s marginality; it shifts existing feminist theory into a different paradigm that provides the opportunity to revisit and revise the female dimension of the African American experience, achievement, and practice. We can read Robinson’s activism for racial equality as putting her in a special category of women whose work embodies a womanist consciousness.

Robinson’s Early Years

Born on February 7, 1914, in Charleston, South Carolina, Bernice Violanthe Robinson (1914-1994) was the youngest of nine children in a working-class family. She completed the ninth grade at Burke High school in Charleston, the final grade of high school for Black children in Charleston at the time. In 1936, she left Charleston for New York to look for steady employment and to escape the harsh realities of southern racism (Lavar, 2005). In sharp contrast to Charleston, New York was a battleground for social change and an active center from which broader struggles were being waged. African American creativity and cultural consciousness were exploding as African Americans searched for Black identity through movements like the Harlem Renaissance. Huggins (2007) calls this generation of positive-thinking Harlem Renaissance scholars, artists, and intellectuals, “optimistic and progressive” and “on the threshold of a new day” (p. 5). Although my research does not include any data on Robinson’s involvement in the arts movement in New York, it was in New York that she earned her high school diploma and gained cultural enlightenment that will embolden her in her work in Charleston.

Her modern life in New York was so different from the one she had known in the Jim Crow South that it would alter her political consciousness and increase her assertiveness. Robinson was already voting when she had to leave New York and resettle in Charleston in 1947 to attend to her aging parents. But she found she had no voting rights in Charleston’s politically and socially oppressive environment. So instead, like many other African Americans, she found a way to become economically independent of the White community. She established herself as a hairdresser, working out of her basement, and she taught young women how to sew. These efforts also demonstrated early on her concern for education and the learning of practical skills. Her self-propulsion and yearning for a better life for herself showed strength and intelligence in her character.

By the time Robinson came to Highlander in 1956, she was in her early 40s, and like many others of her race had experienced major social and economic challenges imposed by the Great Depression of the 1930s, and discriminatory institutional structures of a failed democracy.

The Highlander Folk School—a Hotbed for Radical Activism

The Highlander Folk School was founded in 1932 in Monteagle, Tennessee, by Myles Horton, a son of the rural south, and an intellectual with a strong commitment to anti-oppression and anti-segregation. Inspired by the Danish Folk school model that fostered democracy and social justice, Horton aimed to develop “a folk institution facilitating collective action by using non-formal adult education to build upon and support the cultural strengths of indigenous peoples” (Edwards & McCarthy, 1992, p. 547). Highlander instituted a four-part philosophy as the cornerstone of this work: Education is a force for positive social change. Solutions to oppression can be found within the oppressed communities. Educational programs are informed by the experiences of the oppressed. The responsibility of changing society belongs to the oppressed (Horton, 1990a, 1990b).

Highlander had started out as a progressive leadership training ground for White labor leaders during the Great Depression of the 1930s. It was a hotbed for political mobilization and networking for labor organizers in the south fighting for equality, justice, and democracy, and it was an affiliate of the Congress for Industrial Organization (Glen, 1988; Horton, 1990a). Highlander regularly broke the color line by teaching Blacks and Whites in the same labor training workshops, a practice that the larger southern society vehemently opposed. But the Red Scare after World War II undermined Highlander’s relationship with the labor movement (Edwards & McCarthy, 1992). Although White America generally prospered from the economic boom following World War II, most African Americans languished under Jim Crow and its accompanying poverty and limited civil rights. In response to all these realities, the school refocused in the mid-1950s on mobilizing for civil rights. Highlander became a vital hub for political activism and resistance training for civil rights activists with three primary aims: to fight segregation, promote nonviolent protest, and encourage Black voter registration (Glen, 1988; Levine, 2004). Highlander offered educational and interdisciplinary workshops that included public speaking, current events, parliamentary law, and economics among many others.

Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Rev. Abernathy were some of the more visible civil rights leaders who came through Highlander in the 1950s (Horton, 1990a). The school also inspired local and international adult education scholars and advocates, including Paulo Freire, the notable Brazilian educator. Freire was attracted by Highlander’s adult education program that uniquely addressed the emerging social and political needs of African Americans’ rural poor (Adams & Horton, 1975; Ling, 1995). Southern Black communities knew about Highlander too. Robinson’s relative Septima Clark, a native of South Carolina, had been a trained public schoolteacher on Johns Island between 1919 and 1929 (Horton, 1990a; Levine, 2004) and came to work with Highlander to combat segregation and foster social justice. She lost her teaching position once the White bureaucracy learned of her involvement with Highlander and what it represented. Esau Jenkins was a political activist and community leader on South Island, and was mobilizing African Americans to participate in activities that will bring freedom and uplift the race; he too admired the work at Highlander.

Critics subsequently discredited the school as “a communist training school” and closed it in 1961. The staff restructured the institution, renamed it the Highlander Research and Education Center, and moved it to Knoxville, Tennessee. The Southern Christian Leadership Council under the Dr. Martin Luther King in May 1961 took over operation of the Citizenship Schools whose first teacher was Robinson and which taught literacy and civic literacy including economic empowerment (Glen, 1988; Levine, 2004). By 1970, when the Center closed, more than 2,500 African Americans had completed teacher training in basic literacy and civic empowerment; and they would in turn train tens of thousands of other African Americans, crucial actors in the movement to first class citizenship (Levine, 2004).

Robinson at Highlander

Robinson joined the Highlander folk School in 1956 at the urging of three key people: Septima Clark, her relative and who was then the Director of Education at Highlander; Myles Horton, founder of the School; and Esau Jenkins, the successful farmer and Black community leader from the South Islands (Levine, 2004). Horton and Clark considered Robinson to be the prime candidate for the teaching position in their new Citizenship Education Program (CEP), a literacy/citizenship program for African Americans. The first Citizenship school to promote literacy and civic literacy was to be launched on Johns Island, one of the Sea Islands in between South Carolina and Georgia.

The Highlander staff knew that Robinson was not a trained teacher like Clark. But as a trained beautician and seamstress with clients who were almost exclusively Black, she was economically independent of the White economic system. She had been active in the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and Young Men‘s Christian Association (YMCA); she was native to the culture of the Sea Islands of South Carolina; and she had returned from New York where she had lived, worked, and enjoyed newfound freedom and empowerment beyond the confines of the institutionalized racism and state-sanctioned segregation of her hometown of Charleston. Robinson’s lack of teaching credentials, her economic independence, and her originality, all made her a viable teacher of nontraditional adults, a change agent who could effectively address the mind-set of rural adults. In their estimation, Robinson would be less subject to conventional educational methodologies and would have greater flexibility and sensitivity to the needs of rural people who had been terrorized, marginalized, and silenced for hundreds of years. Both the students and their oppression would be familiar to her because she suffered similar oppression.

Even with the love she exhibited for her people, Robinson (1980) was totally unprepared for Horton and Clark’s invitation to serve as a teacher on Johns Island. With anxiety and apprehension, she initially declined it as recorded in an interview:

I said, “I never been no teacher and I’m not going to be a teacher. I’ll help in any way—I told you that up there at Highlander, That I would help you all, help in any way that I could, I would help a teacher with the school, but I ain’t no teacher.” (Robinson, 1980)

Nonetheless, she subsequently accepted the teaching position as a true womanist with a strong commitment to addressing the needs of her people and uplifting the Black community.

Bringing a New Pedagogy to Johns Island

Robinson did not arrive in Johns Island in 1957 with no political perspective. She had been getting herself acquainted with politics there. She had learned that Johns Island was one of a chain of South Sea Islands settled by emancipated slaves in isolation from the mainland of Charleston, South Carolina. The African descendants in these islands spoke Gullah, a dialect mixed with English and African, and the population remained predominantly Black. The combined population of the islands stood at 10,000. Many earned their livelihood from labor-intensive work in expansive rice and cotton plantations, while others held jobs as fishermen, factory workers, craftsmen, and domestic servants (Levine, 2004). The government largely ignored them to the point of total neglect. They were limited to poor, segregated and substandard public services, and a depressed educational system.

Most important to Robinson and the Highlander School was the fact that only 10% of the residents could read. Yet literacy was basic to voting, for southern states used literacy tests to restrict the suffrage. To be eligible to vote in South Carolina, one had to read and write out selections from the state constitution or pay taxes on property assessed at US$300 or more. Not only did White supremacists use literacy tests to alienate non-literate African Americans from the voting franchise but also they administered those tests inconsistently and reported the results inaccurately (Oldendorf, 1990; Horton, 1990b).

Robinson’s first statement to the pilot class of 14 adults in a makeshift room on Johns Island in 1957 was pivotal to her pedagogy and to the success of Highlander’s larger project. She approached the learners as her peers with these words:

I’m not going to be a teacher. We’re going to learn together. You’re going to teach me some things, and maybe there are a few things that I might be able to teach you, but I don’t consider myself a teacher. I just feel that I’m here to learn with you. We’ll learn things together. (Wigginton, 1991, p. 64)

These words demonstrate Robinson’s unique pedagogy, a teaching method that would later be referenced within the womanist framework and captured in the article, Giving voice: An inclusive model of instruction—A womanist perspective by Sheared. Sheared (2006) declares,

The teacher must decenter or disempower herself . . . in order to empower the students. The teacher allows students to seek and interpret their world and their words in a political, social, historical and economic context . . . The process is a communal experience. (p. 273)

Robinson believed that it was best for her to put herself on the same level as her students and thus, share knowledge and power in the classroom. She did not advocate the conventional, authoritarian “banking method” that Freire (1970) condemns, in which the teacher makes students “depositiories” of teachers’ thinking and teaching. Her teaching mode introduced a learner-centered, problem-posing, and collaborative approach that has come into the adult education practice more formally over the last four decades (Ntiri, 2009). Freire (1970) stressed that for teaching to be advantageous to the students, the student and teacher must both be “simultaneously teachers and students” (p. 72). The student and the teacher are equal partners promoting critical thinking and communication. He summarized this approach thus:

through dialogue, the teacher of the student and the student of the teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-student with student-teachers, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow. (p. 80)

Robinson’s pedagogy set her apart from most of the other local teaching contemporaries who conducted classes using the traditional approach. Robinson’s experimental style would help shape the curriculum and lay the foundation for the teaching style that educators at Highlander would adopt for the literacy programs in Citizenship Schools in subsequent years (Levine, 2004).

“This Is Your Story”—From Powerless to Powerful

In her classroom, Robinson had three major and urgent goals for her adult students: to encourage them to learn to read and write, to help them pass the literacy test that would grant them first class citizenship, and to affirm their humanity (Clark, 1962; Robinson, 1980). She took into account that her students, though powerless, were adults with real life experiences and ambitions. She invited them to voice their own lived experiences and dictate what was taught in the classroom, drawing from the issues in their lives. She would ask her students to tell their stories in their own words, and then help them to master the vocabulary within their story, making formal and written English more relatable and accessible.

I started off with things that were familiar with them. They were working in the fields and I’d have them tell me stories about what they did out in the fields and what they had in their homes. I’d write these stories out and work with them on the words. I’d say now, “This is your story. We’re going to learn how to read your story”. (Robinson, 1986)

These exercises helped them forge a collective and community spirit while uplifting the Black community as a whole, directly combating racism.

Robinson’s curriculum promoted pride, respect, self-love—the reassuring but radical qualities of a womanist. She used cardboard stencils for practice of filling out voter registration forms, order forms, and money order forms and had students trace over them repeatedly, both rendering the forms familiar and reducing their anxiety over the use of pencils. She drew on multiple disciplines, including sociology, psychology, history, biblical studies, and other humanities offerings (songs, films, poetry, prayers), reaching far beyond the traditional practices of the time. She replaced elementary books like “See Dick run” with innovative and more culturally relevant texts with an Afrocentric perspective (Levine, 2004). This communal way of teaching is highly valued within the womanist framework.

A radical and unique aspect of Robinson’s pedagogy was her lack of shaming in the classroom. She refrained from ridiculing students for making mistakes; she simply encouraged her students. She understood that shame would only discourage them. Her sensitivity to their situation is visible in another solution to their anxiety over pencils.

When they first hold a pencil, nine times out of ten, they’d break it. The physical adjustment isn’t easy. You could hear those pencils snapping all over the room. We decided right there that no teacher should ever show any concern about pencils, because that would be intimidating, but simply hand students another one and say there are plenty more. (Lavar, 2005, p. 17)

Notably, Robinson’s pedagogy was not simply about learning to read and write but was rooted in practical information and the gain of personal and political power. She taught students how to read a section of the South Carolina Constitution and how to sign their own names: the two requirements needed in order to register to vote. Robinson devoted time in her classes providing knowledge about social security, voting requirements, imprisonment, driver’s safety, income tax, filling out forms, and government services and programs (Levine, 2004). She enlightened students about the current racial and political state of the country and opened their eyes to the fact that they were underrepresented on the city board. The following case shows that her classes had changed her students’ frame of reference and that they had gained confidence in new arenas. Robinson in her 1980 recorded interview reported this history-making, exhilarating event at a local plant:

Each worker, in the oyster factory where most of the Negroes worked, was allowed to carry home a quart jar of oysters. It seems that there were two white fellows, added to the Forestry and Fishery Commission, who trumped up a charge that a woman sold her jar of oysters without a permit. She had been in a Citizenship class and was with the local organization affiliated with SCLC. When a warrant was taken out for her arrest, the Citizenship teacher called me. I took Esau Jenkins with me and talked with the SCLC group. They raised their own funds, hired their own lawyer, and during the trial filled the courtroom. There wasn’t even standing room. Negroes were all over the courtyard that night.

Faced with such a strong and defiant presence, the all-White jury handed over a verdict of not guilty, in contrast to the previous past three cases where Negroes did not stand a chance (Levine, 2004).

Robinson’s initial class of 14 students in 1957 jumped to 106 students in the winter of 1958/1959 and the numbers kept growing (Oldendorf, 1990; Ling, 1995; Levine, 2004). By 1958, she became the official supervisor of CEP, and ultimately, she established eight schools in the south in order to further the teachings of the first school (Lavar, 2005).

After Robinson’s success on Johns Island, she returned to Highlander, where she became an integral and driving force and moved into administrative and consulting duties. Freire later praised Robinson’s teaching in the Citizenship Schools and her program building:

Another thing that I feel is important in . . . this beautiful story is how Bernice multiplied the program—Bernice without courses, without lots of theoretical introductions! . . . Bernice prepared for future educators by teaching in their presence. It’s beautiful because she taught through her example. (Horton & Freire, 1990, p. 74)

Robinson’s pedagogy was uniquely her own; it contrasted sharply with that of others who taught or had taught adults in the struggle to “uplift the race.”

African American Struggle for Education and Democracy

The period from 1860 to the 1960s had been uniquely active with the emergence of Black leadership in response to the need to “uplift the race,” address the “Negro problem” and pursue a more participatory democracy in the age of social reform (Alridge, 2008). The voice of protest and resistance by African American social activists both male and female was loud and constant. African Americans were not passive bystanders to White racism; education was at the forefront of the protest agenda (Johnson, 2000; Alridge, 2008). Schools were segregated and there was blatant abuse of power in public education, a critical element in the path to participatory democracy (Johnson, 2000). Even with the Brown versus Board of Education ruling in 1954, which ended centuries of segregationist practices in public education, White citizens on a large-scale refused to accept the legislation, and they accompanied that refusal with heinous and violent acts (Alridge, 2008). It was evident that African American educators, historians, and activists had to seek ways to uplift and humanize the Black person in America through education and to challenge the western claims of democracy and White supremacy.

What was not so evident was by what means they might achieve those goals. Recognized leaders who were highly educated and politically connected had significant pedagogical and ideological differences among themselves in their approaches to combat discriminatory practices in both the educational and political systems that hindered African Americans from fully participating in democracy. Education was the key to attaining their democratic rights.

Alridge (2008) presents a comprehensive socio-historical narrative of the period, an important context for interpreting the various educational philosophies and political activism of African American educators and political leaders to address the imperfections and weaknesses in the democratic society. He shows how these leaders fought back to their advantage and resisted oppression successfully. He cites the work of W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963), one of the leading intellectuals and political leaders of the 20th century, particularly his promotion of equality and total emancipation for Blacks through a classical education and college training. In sharp contrast, was Booker T. Washington (1856-1919) who advocated industrial education for African Americans in his accommodationist framework (Alridge, 2008). He did not promote political and civil action in the face of discrimination but wanted African Americans to acquire property, character, and education. In his Atlanta Compromise speech of 1895, Washington pushed for acceptance of “the alleged inferiority of the Negro race” (Alridge, 2008, p. 53). Such accommodation to racist views arguably limited his long-term overall influence on his people’s pursuit of democracy and equality.

Even more important for Robinson’s work and this article were women educators and activists. Anna Julia Cooper (1858-1964) and Nannie Burroughs (1879-1961) were two of many highly educated women who practiced various pedagogies of resistance while pushing for the ideals of equality, liberty, and democracy (Alridge, 2008). Johnson (2000), in a comprehensive work of Cooper and Burroughs, African American history and culture, defines them as warriors for education who shared a commitment to and an understanding of democracy as a human right accessible through education. Although “the gendered nature of . . . education has positioned women’s contributions as low-status ‘practice’ rather than high-status ‘theory’” (Crocco & Davis, 1999, p. 3), both Cooper and Burroughs became transformative agents who conflated education and social activism. We can liken them to Robinson within the womanist framework, given the nature of their educational and emancipatory accomplishments. Each made significant contributions to the betterment and survival of African American people through intellectual writing to eradicate race, class, and gender oppression. Most importantly, they created educational establishments: schools for girls, the National Association of Colored Women, and the Women’s Club movement (Johnson, 2000).

The actions of these dynamic activists helped to elevate women’s perspectives on the status of African Americans. Yet male voices predominated in Black protest in the civil rights period. There was an absence of a distinguished place for these women’s singular accomplishments in education, suffrage mobilization, and employment services. “Although their contributions to the field of education were distinctive, their accomplishments, experiences, and ‘voices’ have remained ignored or forgotten by educational historians” (Johnson, 2000, p. xi). Johnson’s scholarship is a contribution to pulling them from obscurity and reclaiming their “voices.”

Democracy in a society founded on White supremacy subordinated Black citizens and stripped them of all civil and political rights. Nonetheless, African Americans were always resisting White supremacist acts because they believed democracy was possible. One of the first items that Robinson took to Johns Island was the United Nations charter, which outlines ideal democratic principles of society (Levine, 2004). Robinson’s education, unique pedagogy, and womanist orientation put her on a different footing from the other more educated African American adult educators noted above who were more intellectually positioned to push for political and educational change at higher academic and societal levels.

The Burden of History and Society: Robinson’s Influence From the Margins

Following her work with Highlander, Robinson ran in the race for State Senate in South Carolina and lost. She continued to work as an activist until her death in 1988.

Although her work went widely unrecognized, as did the work of most women and particularly African American women of her time, she embodied the qualities of a womanist: she trusted, empowered, and loved her adult students, qualities recognized and valued later by notable adult education scholars as critical for adult learning. Like Robinson, Freire (1970) situates love in the oppressive context as one of the primary keys to adult learning: “Love is the foundation of dialogue and dialogue itself . . . love is commitment to others . . . No matter where the oppressed are found, the act of love is commitment to their cause—the cause of liberation” (p. 89).

Out of the historical, material, and epistemological conditions affecting their oppressed collective, Robinson and her students then challenged state and local government to address social injustice and demanded that they live up to promises of the democratic ideal. These were eye-opening, illuminating experiences for many who had been cowed into a sense of racial inferiority under Jim Crow. Her timely, practical, and radical teaching approaches exemplified what modern educators refer to as “best practices,” yet little recognition has been given to her or her work. Robinson’s position of marginality may have resulted from her lack of interest or training in scientifically recording her unconventional pedagogical strategies and the low social status that was accorded many African American women in the south during the civil rights movement as a result of segregation, domination, and sexual prejudice. This marginality is the topic of wide-scale scholarship by women scholars. The invisibility of southern African American women leaders in the civil rights movement has been amply documented (Barnett, 1993; Langston, 1993; Standley, 1993; Robnett, 1996). Fighting society’s oppression in this era was even more problematic for these African America women, who were significantly represented in the movement, but were often relegated to second-class status or confined to the informal level of leadership (Barnett, 1993; Langston, 1993; Standley, 1993). Barnett further states categorically that “far from being apolitical or inconsequential, Black women were crucial to the Civil rights movement and their personal experiences were unique as well as political, and that Black women’s activism should be central to social movement scholarship” (p. 165). In Bending the Future to Their Will, Crocco and Davis (1999) show that invisibility was the fate not only of African American women but also of White women through the longer history of civil rights (Jane Addams, Lucy Maynard Salmon, Elizabeth Almira Allen, Corinne Seeds, Helen Hefferman, et al.). Although White women enjoyed a higher level of privilege, these activists were committed to education, democracy, and citizenship, and all suffered from the application of rigid paternalistic practices that relegated women to a subordinate status and voice. Recent scholars have had to recover their history from obscurity and establish their rightful place in society (Crocco & Davis, 1999).

But gendering also shaped how Robinson’s story has been told. African American women have widely been omitted from social movement scholarship and “have remained anonymous, a category of invisible, unsung heroes of one of the most revolutionary periods of modern American history” (Barnett, 1993, p. 163). Likewise, Robinson has been largely unacknowledged in the study of new paradigms of reform, resistance, and social change in adult education, even though her pedagogy was a model of foundational premises that are now common in adult education curricula. “This invisibility of African American women in history has produced misrepresentations and leaves voids in educators’ cognition, distorting their knowledge base” (Carlton-Laney, 2006, p. 297). Because of the exclusion of African American women like Robinson, the “concepts, perspectives, methods, and pedagogues of women’s history and women’s studies have been developed without consideration of the experiences of black women” (Brown, 1989, p. 610).

Conclusion

This article is corrective in two ways: it aims to entrench a lay person with stellar abilities, Robinson and her radical pedagogy, in mainstream literature on adult learning; and it aims to bring womanism into conversation with pedagogical theories. This story of one whose unrealized potential was maximized through an opportunity to teach illiterate rural adults in a limited time frame holds significant lessons on adult learning principles and practices today for teachers and students alike. Her successful liberatory pedagogy yielded results that were key to liberation and advancement in the society and helped map the route to participatory democracy through education. Understanding her work by means of womanist theory not only helps us see the breadth and depth of her contributions but also raises consciousness about African American women’s experience and their efforts to make this society more humane. Increasing women’s activism and global enlightenment, as Robinson herself did, could restore African American women to their meritorious place in the annals rather than relegating them to the footnotes of history.

Robinson was a practitioner, not someone seeking to generate theory. Because she was not interested or trained in more scientific recording of the pedagogies she embraced, and because subsequent historians have not valued her kind of work, we find only fragmented pieces recaptured from oral interviews and reflections.

But she has left another legacy. Many African American people who later became integral members of the movement and rose to various levels of power in the society had their start in the Citizenship Schools (Adams & Horton, 1975; Horton, 1990a). Significantly, the schools effectively paved the way for the rural Black community to join the civil rights movement. Thus, Robinson’s efforts dramatically enhanced the movement and arguably helped to lead to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1963.

Finally, it is gratifying to know that her practice may be linked with Freire’s philosophy on radical education, which has received and continues to receive wide acclaim not only in adult literacy education but also in educational circles and journals across the country (Giroux, 2010). His work at Highlander and the possible links to Robinson’s practice lift her to new places and causes.

Robinson was much more than “simply” a teacher or teacher trainer (Horton, 1990; Barnett, 1993; Ling, 1995; Levine, 2004) or one of the foot soldiers in the Highlander camp. She was a reformer, a change agent, and a leader, and her contributions to the Adult Education field, voter registration, and the Voting Rights Act and, as the name of her schools suggests, citizenship itself requires scholars to revisit her position and fully acknowledge her contribution. Acting from an effectively womanist epistemology that beckoned her to a heightened political awareness, Robinson deserves a more significant place in history. Her work is a major resource in the unfolding and intertwined history of literacy, women, and African Americans and civil rights.