Sarah Frances Shaw Graves, John W. Fields, W.E.B. DuBois and Zianna Oliphant have shared anecdotes about their and other’s blackness in various pieces. The anecdotes collectively Illustrate how Blacks during and after slavery were kept uneducated and have provoked African americans to become enlightened as well as consider their community and future generations. In Sarah Frances Shaw Grave’s narrative, she recollects her and her family’s experiences as slaves. Graves explains, “They never wanted mama to know, ‘cause they knowed she would never marry so long she knew where he was”. Grave’s mother was deliberately kept ignorant as to the whereabouts of her husband by her master, so that he could more easily subjugate her. Similarly in John W.
