“Pretends he can read”: Runaways and Literacy in Colonial America, 1730–1776

For half a century or more, historians have turned to runaway notices to make known the complexity of African American life during the colonial era. Although some, for example, have made use of them to illustrate instances of slave discontent or their understanding of the politics of the day, others have used notices to reveal slave efforts to keep their families together or retain African customs and ways. Surprisingly, absent in that body of scholarship is a discussion of slave literacy, which is the focus of “Pretends he can read.” Breaking with tradition, which has presumed that slaves were denied access to books and literacy, except for a rare few such as Phillis Wheatley, Jupiter Hammon, and Lucy Terry, this essay demonstrates otherwise, as it shows increasing rates of literacy among runaways throughout eighteenth-century British North America.