ABSTRACT
This chapter expresses that the "spirit of improvement, and self-elevation, which is animating the greater mass of our people, is truly encouraging and commendable". It explores the textual representations of African American girlhood in the pages of the Recorder, the Philadelphia-based flagship paper of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, during the politically turbulent 1850s and 1860s. The chapter also expresses that by constructing and modeling ideal images of African American girlhood and female reading, the Recorder guided its readers in negotiating their religious and secular identities, while also promoting female education and literacy within certain boundaries. It examines how the Recorder constructed the ideal African American girl reader in line with its religious mission and entered into the ongoing public debates about the benefits and dangers reading was thought to pose for women and girls of African American background at mid-century.
