Through a study of six-year-olds who were successfully becoming literate, this book explores literacy and literacy learning among poor Black urban families. The ethnographic approach examines the experiences of four families whose lives and aspirations make it clear that literacy is an integral part of the children's daily lives, and that the lives of the families transcend preconceived notions about how the poor behave. For these families in which the children were learning to read and write successfully, the parents' provision of a literate environment and their support of their children's education were balanced with the children's strong need to become independent survivors in a sometimes hostile world. An analysis of the types of reading and writing family members engage in serves to strengthen the argument that generalizations about these families are unjust. The survival of these families and the ways they provide for their children make clear the necessity of the involvement of schools in the real lives of their students, and the involvement of parents in the schools. An appendix discusses the conduct of ethnographic fieldwork, and a second contains the research plan. (Contains 90 references.) (SLD)