The Right Picture in the Wrong Frame
The lost lesson of Jada Williams' essay on Frederick Douglass While most of her peers were spending Christmas break diligently avoiding anything that resembled schoolwork, 13-year-old Jada Williams spent her time reading The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and preparing an essay on the book. What Williams read moved her and opened her eyes to some of the problems extant in her Rochester, NY public school. In her essay, which she shared with her class, Williams drew parallels between the appalling illiteracy rate in city schools and the illiterate state slave owners kept blacks in. And she took aim at her teachers. That was apparently a mistake. According to Jada and her mother, the essay launched a campaign of harassment directed at the girl, ultimately forcing her to transfer to another school. I will admit, at first I was skeptical. I thought perhaps Jada’s essay was merely a diatribe of racial grievances with no basis in reality or the book and that the harassment w...