To determine whether black children who speak a nonstandard dialect have difficulty in spelling because of the dialect features of their vocabulary, spelling tests were administered to 66 black English-speaking children in the first, second, and third grades. The results indicated that children who spoke black dialect exhibited spelling difficulties that related significantly to certain pronunciation differences in black English. The features of black English phonology that caused the most difficulty varied among each grade level. Although errors made in the first grade became less severe at each subsequent grade, commonality of certain errors persisted through the third grade. (Author/FL)