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This article explores nuances of power and powerlessness in adult literacy, pedagogy in the civil rights movement of the 1950s. Drawing from interdisciplinary literature, this article places Bernice Violanthe Robinson’s adult, literacy reforms within the revolutionary framework of Highlander Folk, School in Monteagle, Tennessee, and shows how such reforms became a transformative force that helped give the vote to thousands of disenfranchised African Americans. The article examines Robinson’s remarkable service and leadership in the context of womanist theory to address the range of African American women’s lived experiences of the three interlocking systems that oppress them: race, class, and gender. Her work exemplified key principles of the womanist epistemology, emphasizing self-help, self-definition, and community mobilization within the African American community. The article also explores Robinson’s body of work in adult literacy, which resonates with later adult learning theories of political consciousness. Finally, by examining contemporary uses for Robinson’s work, I hope to show the importance of her unique contributions and draw her distinguished career away from the margins. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The United States is in the midst of a growing literacy crisis. Illiteracy rates, particularly among African Americans and other minority groups, are profoundly troubling and demand innovative solutions. This paper contextualizes three salient barriers - incarceration, urban residential segregation and intergenerational illiteracy - post-industrial trends resulting from discontinuities between the larger society and African Americans. Using critical race theory to guide the exploration of these topics, I show how race and racism permeate our social fabric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A good part of the recent public debate in US educational policy circles has focused on the myriad challenges we face as a nation on literacy achievement particularly in urban communities and among African Americans. In this paper, we examine the problem of framing in literacy that confronts advocates and policy makers who seek to address this deeply entrenched social issue but are challenged by numerous structural constraints on the part of the government, the community and the individual. The paper presents arguments embedded in critical race theories that raise questions surrounding why and how long the illiteracy issue can be framed as an 'African American dilemma or problem' and whether Eurocentric approaches in the classroom should be replaced by Afrocentric ones to improve scholastic achievement among African Americans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores the impact of a welfare reform bill on female heads of households in the United States and the implications on both the home front and at the workplace. Job volatility for women; Obstacles to occupational success; Restructuring of priorities; Policies in welfare reform.