Thank you, Chairman Boehner, Chairman Castle, Congressman Kildee and members of the Committee for inviting me here and giving me this opportunity to spend some time talking with you.

You’ve asked us to speak about literacy today and I could not be more proud to be associated with an exceptional company like Verizon. As its company spokesperson, I have seen how passionate they are about literacy and how strongly they are committed to be America’s Literacy Champion. My role as Verizon’s spokesperson gives me the opportunity to be a literacy advocate and travel across America reading to children to talk to them about the importance of books in their lives. It’s by far one of the most enjoyable things that I do.

Creating a more literate society is a job -- a responsibility that falls on every person who can read. Verizon’s focus on literacy makes that job easier for many people, and I know it’s deeply appreciated by the nation’s leading literacy providers and by local literacy agencies and volunteers all across the country.

92 million Americans have low or very low literacy skills – they cannot read above the 6^th grade level. To be illiterate in America -- or anywhere for that matter -- is to be unsafe, uncomfortable and unprotected.

For the illiterate, despair and defeat serve as daily fare. A world of uncertainty rises anew with every word they confront in black and white.

Can any of us who do know how to read really understand the sadness that is associated with the inability to read? The silent humiliation that always attends it? The quiet desperation that can’t really be expressed? The hundreds of ways that those who cannot read struggle in shame to keep their secret?

While most of us in this room cannot possibly understand fully the anguish of those who cannot read, I can because it affected my own family.

Parthenia Connolly was my great-great-grandmother -- and she made her way to this country from Ireland before the Civil War. She indentured herself as a servant and ended up in Mississippi, where she met and then eventually married my great-great-grandfather, Brice.

I mention her because Parthenia lived in a very different age, an age where because she dared to teach a black man to read she was a criminal in the eyes of the law. And the man she taught her husband, Brice -- a black man who had the audacity to learn how to read -- was guiltier than she -- and subject to the harshest punishment if his secret was known.

Ironic, isn’t it? Brice learned to read and feared that others might find out. Today, it’s the man or woman who can’t read who puts enormous energy and creativity into the effort to keep their illiteracy a secret.

I have wondered sometimes what Brice must have thought as the foreign words and symbols of the English language began to unravel themselves in his mind.

I can’t help but think that his first real taste of freedom in this country came the day he made the connection between a familiar word and some letters in a book.

He must have known that he’d found the real key to self-possession the real key to unlocking the chains of his slavery.

While my grandfather Brice’s story is not unique, it is highly illustrative of the struggle out of illiteracy. It was and still is part of the story of America.

In my family, we say the love of reading and book learning is in our bone memory. Parthenia and Brice passed on their love of reading to my great-grandfather, Wyatt, who owned a modest library, and encouraged his family to read his books and to revere them.

I’m told that now and then, Wyatt would tempt his children and grandchildren by allowing them to touch the books he owned, to hold them very carefully and treat them with respect.

Those seeds certainly took root in my grandfather, John Henry -- the man who raised me and made sure that I got an education.

For that and many other reasons, he was my hero. He helped me discover the world. Books were cherished possessions. They are no less for me.

As a child, I gave up speech. I stuttered badly, and so I retreated and lived in a world of silence rather than speak. But I found my voice in books and I found the expanded vocabulary that is so important for someone who stutters.

I developed a love for science and science fiction, the tales of the impossible. Jules Verne took me on adventures under the sea, under the Earth, and through time itself. Through his words, through my ability to read them, I could serve with Captain Nemo and thrive in a variety of worlds.

I was mute to the outside world, but there were hundreds of conversations in my head.

And that is the beauty of reading that all children discover. The world that grown men and women discover when they, too, learn to read.

Today, I am standing before you as a Verizon literacy advocate. I am just one of many celebrity personalities, who have partnered with Verizon and accepted the challenge to bring this insidious disease out of the closet. We are a deeply committed group and proud to do our part.

All of us - lawmakers, reading teachers and tutors, corporate philanthropists, educators, and literacy volunteers - all of us have an important and necessary role addressing this issue.

The hope that is ours to give to the illiterate is ageless, a prize that my great-great-grandfather Brice would have easily recognized.

So it is in his name, and in the spirit of hope that Parthenia awakened in him, that I thank you for letting me share this time with you.