Up from Slavery
Up from Slavery is the 1901 autobiography of the American educator Booker T. Washington (1856–1915). The book describes his experience of working to rise up from being enslaved as a child during the Civil War, the obstacles he overcame to get an education at the new Hampton Institute, and his work establishing vocational schools like the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama to help Black people and other persecuted people of color learn useful, marketable skills and work to pull themselves, as a race, up by the bootstraps. He reflects on the generosity of teachers and philanthropists who helped educate Black and Native Americans. He describes his efforts to instill manners, breeding, health and dignity into students. His educational philosophy stresses combining academic subjects with learning a trade (reminiscent of John Ruskin). Washington explained that the integration of practical subjects is partly designed to "reassure the White community of the usefulness of educating Black people".
The book was first published as a serial in 1900 in The Outlook, a Christian newspaper of New York. It was serialized so that Washington could receive feedback from his audience during the writing and could adapt his work to his diverse audience.[1]
Washington was a controversial figure during his lifetime, and W. E. B. Du Bois, among others, criticized some of his views. The book was a best-seller, and remained the most popular African-American autobiography until that of Malcolm X.[2] In 1998, the Modern Library listed the book at No. 3 on its list of the 100 best nonfiction books of the 20th century, and in 1999 it was also listed by the conservative Intercollegiate Review as one of the "50 Best Books of the Twentieth Century".[3]
Plot summary[edit]
Up from Slavery chronicles more than forty years of Washington's life: from slave to schoolmaster to the face of southern race relations. In this text, Washington climbs the social ladder through hard, manual labor, a decent education, and relationships with great people. Throughout the text, he stresses the importance of education for the black population as a reasonable tactic to ease race relations in the South (particularly in the context of Reconstruction).
The book is, in essence, Washington's traditional, non-confrontational message supported by the example of his life.
Chapter summaries[edit]
Chapter 1[edit]
"A Slave Among Slaves": In the first chapter, the reader is given a vivid yet brief sight of the life of slaves, as seen from the author's point of view. Basically, it speaks of the hardships the slaves endured before independence and their joys and hassles (arguments) after liberty. The first chapter explains about his suffering in that plantation and the end days of his slavery. The author feels that his life had its beginning in midst of the most miserable surroundings. He explains about his living conditions, and how his mother works hard to make the days end.
Chapter 2[edit]
"Boyhood Days": In the second chapter, the reader learns the importance of naming oneself as a means of reaffirming freedom and the extent to which freed men and women would go to reunite their families. After families had reunited and named themselves, they would then seek out employment (often far from their former masters). The reader learns the story behind the author's name: Booker Taliaferro Washington. The second chapter also gives an account of cruel labour of both adults and children in the mines at the city of Malden. Furthermore, Booker is strongly attracted towards education and oscillates between the extensive schedule of the day's work and the school. The second chapter also describes the character of Booker's mother and her role in his life.
Context[edit]
The America of the 1880s and 1890s was one of white hostility toward African Americans. There was also the belief that the African-American race would not have been able to survive without the institution of slavery. Popular culture played in to the ideas of "black criminality and moral decline" as can be seen in the characters Jim_Crow_(character) and Zip Coon. When Washington began his writing and public speaking, he was fighting the notion that African Americans were inherently stupid and incapable of civilization. Washington's primary goal was to impress upon the audience the possibility of progress. Furthermore, living in the Black Belt, Booker T. Washington was vulnerable to mob violence and was, therefore, always mindful not to provoke the mob. As would be expected for a man in such precarious position, when violence erupted, he tried to stem his talk of equality and progress so as not to exacerbate the situation.[11]
Lynching in the South at this time was prevalent as mobs of whites would take the law into their own hands and would torture and murder of dozens of men and women, including white men. The offenses of the victims included: "for being victor over a white man in a fight;" "protecting fugitive from posse;" "stealing seventy-five cents;" "expressing sympathy for mob's victim;" "for being father of boy who jostled white women." It is clear that any white person to show sympathy or offer protection for African-American victims would be labeled complicit himself and become vulnerable to violence by the mob. In 1901, Reverend Quincy Ewing of Mississippi charged the press and pulpit with uniting public sentiment against lynching. Lynching would continue into the 1950s and 1960s.[12]
Some blame Washington's comparatively sheepish message upon a lack of desire for true African-American uplift. Some, taking into account the environment in which he was delivering his message, support Washington for making any public stance at all.
The relationship between Washington and his critics[edit]
Since its publication, according to biographer Louis Harlan, Up From Slavery has been read as painting Booker T. Washington as both an "accommodationist and calculating realist seeking to carve out a viable strategy for black struggle amidst the nadir of race relations in the United States." While more contemporary ideas of black civil rights call for a more provocative approach, Washington was certainly a major figure in his time. Most critiques of him target his accommodationism, yet his private life was very much aimed at opposition through funding. The Atlanta Exposition speech shows his dual nature, giving everyone present something to agree with, no matter their intention. Washington deserves praise, in the view of historian Fitzhugh Brundage, for "seeking to be all things to all men in a multifaceted society."[13] Many do argue against his being characterized as an accommodationist. For example, biographer Robert Norrell has written, "He worked too hard to resist and to overcome white supremacy to call him an accommodationist, even if some of his white-supremacist southern neighbors so construed some of his statements. Having conditions forced on him, with threat of destruction clearly the cost of resistance, does not constitute a fair definition of accommodation."[14] Historians are thoroughly split over this characterization.
W. E. B. DuBois initially applauded Washington's stance on racial uplift. At one point he went as far as to say of the Atlanta Exposition speech: "here might be a real basis for the settlement between whites and blacks in the South."[15] DuBois, in his book The Souls of Black Folk, congratulates Washington for accomplishing his first task, which was to earn the ear of the white southern population through a spirit of sympathy and cooperation. He also acknowledges the unstable situation in the south and the necessity for sensitivity to community feelings, yet he believes that Washington has failed in his sensitivity to African Americans. DuBois asserts that there are many educated and successful African Americans who would criticize the work of Washington, but they are being hushed in such a way as to impede "democracy and the safeguard of modern society." This is where their paths would diverge: Washington with his "Tuskegee Machine" and DuBois with the "Niagara Movement."[16]
In 1905, the Niagara Movement issued a statement enumerating their demands against oppression and for civil rights. The Movement established itself as an entity entirely removed from Washington in conciliation, but rather a new, more radical course of action: "Through helplessness we may submit, but the voice of protest of ten million Americans must never cease to assail the ears of their fellows, so long as America is unjust." For a time, the Movement grew very successfully, but they lost their effectiveness when chapters began to disagree with one another. Eventually, the Movement's efforts translated into the development of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).[17]
Of course there were other participants in this discussion of the future of the African-American race, including that of W. H. Thomas, another African-American man. Thomas believed that African Americans were "deplorably bad" and that it would require a "miracle" to make any sort of progress. As in the case of Washington and DuBois, Washington and Thomas have areas of agreement, though DuBois would not so agree: that the best chance for an African American was in the areas of farming and country life. In some respects, it is hard to compare the two as each has different intentions.[18]
Similarly, Thomas Dixon, author of The Clansman (1905), began a newspaper controversy with Washington over the industrial system, most likely to encourage talk of his upcoming book. He characterized the newfound independence of Tuskegee graduates as inciting competition: "Competition is war…. What will the [southern white man] do when put to the test? He will do exactly what his white neighbor in the North does when the Negro threatens his bread—kill him!"[19]
In popular culture[edit]
In September 2011, a seven-part documentary television and DVD series was produced by LionHeart FilmWorks and director Kevin Hershberger using the title Up From Slavery. The 315-minute series is distributed by Mill Creek Entertainment. This series is not directly about the Booker T. Washington autobiography Up From Slavery, but tells the story of Black Slavery in America from the first arrival of African slaves at Jamestown in 1619 to the Civil War and the ratification of the 15th Amendment in 1870, which prohibits the government from denying a citizen the vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude (i.e., slavery), the third of the Reconstruction Amendments which finally ended the legitimacy of slavery in the United States.
