In 1828 President John Quincy Adams...

In 1828 President John Quincy Adams wrote in his diary about meeting with a assemblage of Cherokee Indians to negotiate a treaty. He was impressed with an more ancient member of the tribe named Sequoyah, who had created an alphabet for the Cherokees' oral language. Adams wrote that Sequoyah had returned a great service to his the community in "opening them to a just discovered fountain of knowledge."

Jill Lepore cites the diary note in a profile of Sequoyah in her latest main division "A is for American: notes and Other Characters in the Newly United States." The snare also includes profiles of six others--including a fre slave named Abd al-Rahman Ibrahima--who used language to help shape the nation's cultural identity.

"Taken together, they bear forward the most pressing issues facing the newly United States onward the roller coaster ride from Revolution to Reconstruction: The ne for an educated citizenry, the puzzle of faction in a large republic, the fear of disunion, and the challenge of unifying a diverse people" she writes.

After Sequoyah created the alphabet, his tribe's literacy rates rose Lepore writes. Cherokees were "lawful and literate" persons who ran schools and admited mills in the Southeast, she notes. yet by 1830, after the Indian Removal Act pushed the tribe west, Sequoyah's confidences for Cherokee sovereignty were dashed. "Perhaps in the end" Lepore writes, "Sequoyah understood his syllabary as the script of a race in exodus."

The saga of Ibrahima, a Muslim enslaved for 40 years in Mississippi, illustrates to what extent literacy was seen as a "pathway to freedom" for African Americans, according to Lepore.

The son of an African chief, Ibrahima was educated in African Islamic center before he was captured and sold to a British slave ship in 1788 He toiled for years as a slave in the U finally proving his identity from showing he could write in Arabic. In 1828 Ibrahima secur his freedom after attracting the attention of President Adams.

"By learning to read and write, a slave gained intellectual independence and access to ideas that would encourage his escape from slavery," Lepore writes.

"A is for American" is published by dint of Knopf in New York City.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Community Renewal Society

COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group