And I mean, it gives me chills to this day. And she started crying even before I started reading it. I brought the note home and said, mom, I got a note from the school. But I remember and she finally tells the story to this day that when I brought that note home twelve and a half, twelve and three-quarters years old. And I would sort of go by her facial expression if it was a good note or bad note. And historically for me, that the drill was always the teacher will write a note, I'd put it at my bag, I'd bring it home, I'd hand it to my mother and she'd read it. I brought home a note from school from a teacher. PITTS: Even before I read my first book, I remember the first thing I ever read out loud that wasn't memorized. And so I knew that there was - even when I was struggling, I knew that there was a value to my life.ĬHIDEYA: When you first read a book all the way through, what was that like for you emotionally? And, you know, my faith always told me as a child that, you know, as the old saying goes, God didn't make no junk. And so I would give the bulk of the credits to my mother who wouldn't accept no and kept pushing. I remember one therapist suggested early on to my mother that perhaps I was mentally retarded. There's then some indication later in life that I might be dyslexic. I mean, there was the argument that because, you know, I was attending an overcrowded school that I missed out some of the basics. That was my lowest moment in my inability to read, to know that I had brought not just pain but I brought shame to my mother.Īnd I mean, it was never made clear what my issue was. I wasn't sure what the words meant but I know what my mother's tears meant and that it broke her heart. Pitts, your son is functionally illiterate. And the second time was when the therapist told my mother - I've never forgotten his words - I'm sorry Mrs. The first time, when it came on the radio that Martin Luther King, Jr. And what happened with me - I remember, you know, my mother who was, you know, the classic southern woman, I've only seen my mother cry twice in my life. I'd memorized that graph(ph).ĬHIDEYA: It seems to me that that must have been an awful lot of work. I would find a paragraph that I felt comfortable reading that my brother and sister and mom would read back to me. And then they would say it over and over again and finally, I would memorize -let's say if the assignment the next day was to read, we're going to read a chapter out loud. And then finally, out of frustration, they would say, well, this is what it says and they would kind of read it out loud, and I pretend that I was dumb and - I mean, they only thought I was, you know, I was a spoiled brat, geek so they were annoyed to do that to begin with. And so, when I would have an assignment, I would harass my brother and sister to help me with it. My mother supervising as she cooked dinner and saw the clothes and did four other jobs. So when I was at home, it was always myself, my brother and sister and doing our homework at the kitchen table. I've always had the ability to memorize things pretty well. PITTS: Well, in many ways, it was easy to hide in plain sight. So every time I do a story about an at risk child that does something they shouldn't do, I always say to myself they're before the grace of God.ĬHIDEYA: What did you do to hide the fact of what you were struggling with from your teachers, from your mother, folks like that? Teachers are overwhelmed, parents are overwhelmed and kids fall through the cracks. But, you know, it's a story you hear countless times when you talk to kids who grow up in urban America, in crowded schools. And when we took this test, it was discovered I couldn't read the directions. So the assumption was I couldn't do math. In fact, the issue became - I finally got tested when I was having a hard time with math. BYRON PITTS (Correspondent, CBS): No one noticed that I couldn't read. He's with us because before Pitts became a journalist, he was functionally illiterate. Byron Pitts is a correspondent for CBS News, but we didn't ask him to file a report for us.
That's right, half.Ĭontinuing our series on The Black Literary Imagination, we take a look at folks who have never picked up a good book because they can't read the cover. where half of the adult population is functionally illiterate. Yet in 2007, there are still some parts of the U.S. From filling out a job application or reading a notice from your landlord to navigating road signs in an unfamiliar city, illiteracy can be crippling. In this day and age, it's hard to imagine anyone can make it through the day without being able to read.