Throughout these endeavors, black women readers deployed various literacies-reading both “aright” as well as “rogue”-to assert their agency in the era of print. Moreover, they documented these acts of reading in cultural artifacts such as scrapbooks, which gave them the ability to manipulate print culture in deeply personal and political ways. Throughout the 19th century, they used reading for racial uplift in institutions such as the black press, the black women’s club movement, and literary societies.
During the 18th century, black women made use of both vernacular and print cultures as strategies of survival and emancipation. Black women readers have innovated various literacies-oral, textual, visual, and digital-as a way to validate their lived experiences, bond with one another, and lobby for their personal and collective agency.