Booker T. Washington (1856–1915)

What do you call a trice-married man accused of being a crafty narcissist who punished those in the way of his personal interests? Booker T Washington (see Michael Bieze, Booker T. Washington Rediscovered, 2012, p209).

This is a rag to riches success story telling of Washington's rise up from slavery, through reconstruction, and the developing of the Tuskegee Institute. Washington's story culminates with his rise to political influence--the Atlanta Exposition address, his trip to Europe and show more his meetings with Presidents Cleveland and McKinley.

Washington is without question a success story and justly remembered for his political gifts, but is criticized for being an accommodationist. He was an African American in the South at the turn of last century and worried that being tackling racial inequality head on would invite White backlash (which was probably a correct assessment). So instead, he tried to help African Americans by promoting education and learning a trade (marketable skills).

This is a realist approach which takes seriously personal responsibility, though in a day and age where African Americans are still discriminated against, suffer systemic violence, and under a president who promises to implement more stop-and-frisks, I think a more prophetic stance is needed. I hear this prophetic stance more in Frederick Douglass than I do in Booker T.

Still I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy reading this. Washington was a generous human being and can talk respectfully, even with affection of former slaveholders while simultaneously affirming that slavery was wrong. show less

The Preface, by William Andrews, a scholar of African-American literature, called the 1901 autobiography Up From Slavery "one of the few African-American texts that can be legitimately termed a classic" and its subject, Booker T. Washington, "one of the most controversial figures in African-American history." Some months ago I read the landmark 1952 novel of African-American literature by Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man. One of the characters, Bledsoe, is famously based upon Booker T. show more Washington, and the portrayal is scathing enough to strip paint. Washington has a reputation among some as an "Uncle Tom" and his vision famously conflicted with that of W.E.B. Du Bois. The Preface notes that Du Bois' critique "Of Booker T. Washington and Others" in the 1903 The Souls of Black Folk. signaled the beginning of the split on Washington within the African-American community and says that in Up From Slavery Washington wore a "minstrel mask."

I can understand why some respond negatively to the man. At one point, Washington claimed that "the black man got nearly as much out of slavery as the white man." In context though, it's clear he means rather Southern whites were also damaged by the institution--that slavery eroded the work ethic in the South, so that manual labor became something slaves did and was looked upon with derision. Washington also claimed at one point that the very experience of slavery had left American blacks stronger "materially, intellectually, morally and religiously" than their African brethren. He seemed to be protesting too much in constantly insisting on the good relations between black and white Southerners. (At one point claiming the Ku Klux Klan was extinct. Admittedly, I once watched a documentary that noted the organization was in fact greatly diminished after Reconstruction--they'd have a resurgence a decade or so later after the book's publication.) And the praise of his Northern white benefactors seemed a bit...fulsome--and shameless name-dropping. (Of course, probably hits me that way partly because it was the style of the times--this is the Victorian Era after all.) But over the course of the book, that did wear at me.

Of course, I do understand Washington was trying to influence a white audience in a time of eroding civil rights (thus the supposed "minstrel mask"). And never, ever did I get the impression either that Washington thought blacks weren't the equal of whites morally, socially or intellectually or that they should not be legally. It's clear Washington thought both slavery and segregation deeply immoral--even if at times I can understand why Du Bois said Washington pursued "an accommodationist strategy." In his famous Atlanta Exposition Address--which Du Bois called the "Atlanta Compromise," Washington, to the applause of white Southerners, said "in all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress." It's hard to disagree with Du Bois who saw Washington as ceding too much in rejecting political power and not insisting on equal civil rights--and irked at his sometimes anti-intellectualism in his insistence of an "industrial" (think vocational) education over a liberal arts higher education.

That's not to say that I don't think there isn't some value in what Washington has to say and what he accomplished. Du Bois wanted to depend on the training up the "talented tenth" into an intellectual elite and saw political power as key to gaining equal civil rights. Washington argued for economic power through self-reliance, a strong work ethic, and practical vocational education. This isn't just a black issue. I can see echoes of this argument today in contemporary debates on poverty and education. And I can understand why after witnessing the transient and seemingly futile period of black office-holding after Reconstruction, Washington might feel the political route was premature and unreliable as a way of progress. And with the Tuskegee Institute situated right in Alabama, Washington was right in the belly of the beast--in the heart of the once slave-holding Confederacy. He may have felt in conceding on civil rights (if concede he did) he wasn't giving up anything within his reach.

Beyond the political issues, this is at times a fascinating piece of history, particularly in the first 50 pages or so of the 146-page book dealing with the young Washington and his memories of slavery and the Reconstruction Era and his efforts to gain an education. The first paragraph reminded me of the opening of Frederick Douglas' slave narrative. Like Douglas, Washington didn't know his own date of birth. Douglas explained that was something slave owners deliberately tried to deny slaves. Also like Douglas, Washington heard rumors his father was white but didn't know him personally. Washington's lifetime took him from slavery to the Civil War through Reconstruction to Jim Crow. It's more later on, when he started to relate the building of the Tuskegee Institute that something about Washington's style started to grate on me, and much of the account began to be tedious. (Goodness, you wouldn't believe Washington's ode to the toothbrush!) Which is a shame, because as William Andrews noted, this is the story of "a former slave who became the most powerful African-American of this era." He started Tuskegee Institute from a "shanty" and a "hen house" and from it built a great American educational institution. But something felt lacking, absent. Maybe Washington himself. There seemed little introspection or humor or even anything really personal at all in his voice. I get why Andrews feels Washington wore a mask, and it takes close reading and outside information to get it to slip a bit to see the complex man underneath. That's where I did find this Norton Critical Edition, which included essays on Washington, including the famous critique by Du Bois, invaluable. It makes rating this book difficult. I do feel this is worth reading as a piece of history--but as a biography it left me feeling decidedly ambivalent. show less

The first half of this book gripped me and had the feel of a classic. The author’s account of his birth, manumission, and youth are a valuable record of the last years of slavery and the first years of reconstruction. His struggles to find work and the obstacles he overcame to gain an education are inspiring. The second half of the book, in contrast, let me down. I don’t begrudge the author his victory lap, recounting how the hard work and sacrifice paid off in the success of the show more Tuskegee Institute or the encomia he received from Harvard, the White House, and other centers of learning and power. But along with this, he dispenses advice reminiscent of the self-satisfied tone of businessmen and political leaders of his day on how to succeed. More disquieting is his persistent optimism. While acknowledging in passing the problems of lynching, vote suppression, as well as the day-to-day disabilities brought on by segregation, his tone is consistently one of optimism, that racial prejudice is passing, and that if his fellow blacks would simply bathe daily and work hard, then the last barriers to full citizenship would fall away. What this Panglossian attitude may have cost him personally is suggested by the fact of his death before turning sixty. An autopsy showed that he suffered from chronic hypertension. All in all, this book is a poignant record of the life of one of the greatest Americans. show less

1865. End of the Civil war. Booker T. Washington, still a child, is, as every other slaves, emancipated.

Here was a sudden freedom, though, which was then like a difficult burden to carry. Yes, slaves were finally free! But.. What of them now? The future, uncertain, seemed to be full of challenges. And yet... Booker T. Washington might have been just a child, but he understood something crucial: the key importance of education. Without education, one cannot go anywhere in life, and, so, show more started here for him a lifelong journey, that of educating himself and promote education as a way to empower oneself. Obviously, it wasn't an easy endeavour...

His family was poor. His step-father (his real father was a White man who never bothered to care about him) needed him to financially help the struggling family. He therefore worked in a coal mine. The work was tough, brutish, exhausting, but the child still found the time to go to school; one of these schools for Black people that were then blossoming all across the South, and where teaching was done mostly by ex-soldiers from the Northern army. It was very rudimentary, but never mind! He learnt how to read, and he read everything he could, sharpening his mind and growing more and more ambitious in the process. More: he wanted to attend a better school, with 'real' teachers.

Supported by his mother, he therefore went on to Hampton University. Here was a key turning point in his life. Hampton indeed was the first school founded by Black people. It was, also, the most prestigious of its kind. When Booker T. Washington was admitted, the principal was General Samuel C. Armstrong, a White man who had fought under the Union flag; and, Armstrong didn't mess about: 'mind, heart and hands', education to him was as much about sharpening the intellect as about learning a trade, and, gain solid moral values. Such vision will stay with Booker Washington for the rest of his life.

He was a brilliant pupil too; so much so that, when Samuel C. Armstrong decided to open another school in Alabama, he will be asked -when he was barely 25!- to become its principal. The school in question? Tuskegee University. The rest is history.

The rest is history, first, because he became thus the first African-American ever to manage a University. This wasn't an easy fate -he knew perfectly well that, were he to fail, his failure would reflect upon Black people as a whole. Then, because the pupil surpassed the master. At Tuskegee indeed, learning was more than about books. Girls were taught about household chores, boys about farming or construction works, and all about the importance of hygiene and health. Learning a trade or gaining practical skills were as important as sharpening the mind, and when students weren't busy engrossed in books, they were working on the constructions of the surrounding buildings! The school quickly acquired a reputation...

Booker T. Washington, in fact, will use such reputation to raise founds and further his cause. For he was more than a pedagogue; he was, most importantly, an activist and campaigner, and education was at the heart of his ideas. When others were battling for political reckoning and civil rights, he considered all that as merely 'secondary causes'. It's not that they weren't important, but, his goal in educating the still then largely marginalised Black people was to teach them useful trades, requiring skills, and, therefore, rendering them indispensable to society. If anybody, including White people, could benefit from such education and usefulness, then, he thought, the rest -political reckoning and civil rights, let alone respect- would follow.

His ideas were scandalous at times, including among Black people themselves (e.g. his Atlanta speech, in which he asked them to don't engage in political lobbying, but, focus on vocational training instead, didn't go as well as he had planned...) he, nevertheless, attempted to be a bridge between Whites and Blacks, at a time when the country was still trying to recover from slavery. Booker T. Washington, of course, was deeply naïve when it comes to how strongly entrenched racism was; yet, there is no denying that his views on education were indeed empowering, if not as much as he would have wished. Here were the early days of emancipation, and a whole century of battle and challenges will follow, but his work, as such, remained a foundation stone, and inspirational to many. 'Up from Slavery' is a great insight into his views (it includes the infamous Atlanta speech). show less