Up from Slavery (Dover Thrift Editions)
1 journaler for this copy...
Arrived today from an Amazon seller.
A good memoir for filling in some blanks. I had heard of Booker T. Washington but did not even recall for what. Now I know both what Washington wanted us to know and what he did not.
Washington was born about seven years (based on current information about his birth) before Lincoln freed the slaves. He was born into slavery and of course knew nothing else until his family was freed. Freedom was not an easy road, and he soon learned that making himself useful would take him places.
He was obsessed with learning to read and so he accomplished it, sometimes through a kind of subterfuge to avoid his father's rules. Stepfather, actually, as his biological father is unknown. He worked hard to get into Hampton, a school that promised him a way out of poverty and into a more fulfilling life. Eventually he was asked to start another school in Tuskegee, Alabama, and it was here that he found his life's work. Through building the school and speaking about it and about "the race problem", he became a well-known orator.
While others demanded real equality, Washington was more cautious. He valued his connections with whites, and they responded. Through his efforts he built a formidable school on a large piece of land and provided an education to thousands of African-Americans. This private school still exists and is thriving.
Washington's position was that the newly-freed slave did not know how to live in a free world. He needed to learn basic skills, like teeth brushing, and he needed to learn how to behave. He should never set himself up as better than others of any color. He needed, above all, to learn manual skills: farming, ranching, building, welding. By these means he could set himself up, be accepted and valued, and raise future generations of educated yet humble people.
Washington also did not concern himself with segregation. He was delighted when the color bars were broken for him, as when he was invited to events normally only open to whites. According to his memoir, skin color would become a non-issue over time, when whites just naturally accepted the grateful, hard-working blacks into their world.
I have three different editions of this book. One, a kindle version, features a foreward by a white contemporary of Washington, W.H. Page, praising the work and emphasizing the impact of Washington's teacher at Hampton, Samuel Armstrong. The Dover Thrift Edition (this book) includes just a short "note", unsigned, saying it was "carefully constructed to present a favorable view of its subject". That comment made me curious but when I looked online I mostly saw the accusations of "Uncle Tom", which I had expected. More enlightening is the third edition, an elderly Dell paperback, which includes a lengthier introduction by Louis Lomax. Lomax was an African-American writer who was active in civil rights organizations. His introduction fills in the gap for me: he points out that if Washington had actually lived and taught the way he presents himself in the autobiography, Lomax would have no quarrel with him. However, in practice he apparently favored manual labor so much over book learning that he discouraged students from carrying books around on campus. He further accepted segregation, assuming that blacks would have to earn their way to parity with whites.
The writing is not spectacular. It skips past significant personal events, like Washington's marriages and the deaths of his wives with barely a mention. It needs better editing. But it tells in detail what it was like to live in that period right after the civil war, when former slaves were finding their way with the few skills they had been allowed to master. And, although one can argue with Washington's contention (echoed by Walter H. Page) that book learning was worse than nothing in this transitional period, there is no doubt that Washington was wildly successful in his quest to create a school that would take others "up from slavery" to a better life. Perhaps he was the right person at the right time, to be followed by more literate, more demanding, more challenging African-Americans.
Washington was born about seven years (based on current information about his birth) before Lincoln freed the slaves. He was born into slavery and of course knew nothing else until his family was freed. Freedom was not an easy road, and he soon learned that making himself useful would take him places.
He was obsessed with learning to read and so he accomplished it, sometimes through a kind of subterfuge to avoid his father's rules. Stepfather, actually, as his biological father is unknown. He worked hard to get into Hampton, a school that promised him a way out of poverty and into a more fulfilling life. Eventually he was asked to start another school in Tuskegee, Alabama, and it was here that he found his life's work. Through building the school and speaking about it and about "the race problem", he became a well-known orator.
While others demanded real equality, Washington was more cautious. He valued his connections with whites, and they responded. Through his efforts he built a formidable school on a large piece of land and provided an education to thousands of African-Americans. This private school still exists and is thriving.
Washington's position was that the newly-freed slave did not know how to live in a free world. He needed to learn basic skills, like teeth brushing, and he needed to learn how to behave. He should never set himself up as better than others of any color. He needed, above all, to learn manual skills: farming, ranching, building, welding. By these means he could set himself up, be accepted and valued, and raise future generations of educated yet humble people.
Washington also did not concern himself with segregation. He was delighted when the color bars were broken for him, as when he was invited to events normally only open to whites. According to his memoir, skin color would become a non-issue over time, when whites just naturally accepted the grateful, hard-working blacks into their world.
I have three different editions of this book. One, a kindle version, features a foreward by a white contemporary of Washington, W.H. Page, praising the work and emphasizing the impact of Washington's teacher at Hampton, Samuel Armstrong. The Dover Thrift Edition (this book) includes just a short "note", unsigned, saying it was "carefully constructed to present a favorable view of its subject". That comment made me curious but when I looked online I mostly saw the accusations of "Uncle Tom", which I had expected. More enlightening is the third edition, an elderly Dell paperback, which includes a lengthier introduction by Louis Lomax. Lomax was an African-American writer who was active in civil rights organizations. His introduction fills in the gap for me: he points out that if Washington had actually lived and taught the way he presents himself in the autobiography, Lomax would have no quarrel with him. However, in practice he apparently favored manual labor so much over book learning that he discouraged students from carrying books around on campus. He further accepted segregation, assuming that blacks would have to earn their way to parity with whites.
The writing is not spectacular. It skips past significant personal events, like Washington's marriages and the deaths of his wives with barely a mention. It needs better editing. But it tells in detail what it was like to live in that period right after the civil war, when former slaves were finding their way with the few skills they had been allowed to master. And, although one can argue with Washington's contention (echoed by Walter H. Page) that book learning was worse than nothing in this transitional period, there is no doubt that Washington was wildly successful in his quest to create a school that would take others "up from slavery" to a better life. Perhaps he was the right person at the right time, to be followed by more literate, more demanding, more challenging African-Americans.
