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Orality has been a feature repeatedly offered to typify African American language habits. Through anthropological studies of contemporary communities as well as literary portrayals and celebrations of cultural heroes such as preachers and political orators, the strong oral traditions of African Americans have figured prominently in discussions of the contexts of their literary works. This article argues for a balance of this image by laying out historical evidence on the literate values and habits of African Americans since the early 1800s. Literary journals, the Black press, literary writers, and literary societies, especially those of women, between 1830 and 1940 highly valued joint reading groups, creative writing efforts, and the role of literature in the lives of African Americans. Considerable work remains to restore accuracy and cross-class representation of African Americans in English studies, so as to resist tendencies to deny variation in the language habits and values of groups included in multicultural literature.

ary position; at the same time it would acknowledge the multiple hierarchies of power and influence that monitor the crossing of their boundaries. Such a model would open up for scrutiny the rich and boundless cultural materials Gere suggests. It would also allow us to return to materials we thought closed, or empty, to texts we have dismissed as simple. Arguments about reading, writing, and education traverse these sites; they do not adhere at all times and with decorum to institutional categories or publishing conventions. We need to rethink the notion that influence and tradition are produced in straight lines, that theories are uttered and then get implemented somehow and the influence spreads down and out until it is diffused in the hinterlands. It is important to recognize that there is always interference with such a model, and that such interference may have considerable effect on how a theory travels and is sustained. This interference can come-and does-from the extracurriculum in its many forms, but it can also come from within the academy, from the pressure of new groups of students or new modes of teacher training, from multiple levels of educational activity, from diverse sites of teaching and learning.