the story of slavery booker t washington

The Tuskegee Institute would flourish and grant Washington further opportunities for public speaking and travel.

Subsequent chapters detail his challenges in getting the buildings constructed, his views on religion at Christmas time, and his efforts to raise funds for the further development and expansion of the school. To say the beginnings were humble would be charitable. At this point, the foundation had been laid for what would become one of his greatest projects: the foundation of a typical school for African Americans, to be located in Tuskegee, Alabama. By the time he finished, educators had seen enough to recommend that he be given administrative responsibilities at the school. He was able to pay his way through performing manual labor, and was typically an excellent student. The next segment of the book revolves around his studies, as well as the lengths to which he had to go in order to remain a student. When the Civil War ends and he realizes that he is free, Washington travels to the Hampton Institute, a university, with only 50 cents in his pocket (about $7 in 2016 dollars). Despite the constrictions of slave life, Washington is not bitter towards his owners. As Washington sees, it is difficult to improve one’s lot when one is limited to asking a narrow, specific set of questions.

An illiterate mind is less likely to be a sharply analytical mind. One of the central themes of the book is that knowledge improves lives, and those who control what people can learn, have an easier time of remaining in control. A good deal of the childhood stage revolves around his fight for literacy. Slaves are not allowed to aspire to more, robbing them of much of their dignity and potential. He is not treated with cruelty, but emphasizes over and over that, while the living conditions were poor and that the institution of slavery, even when slaves were not viciously abused by their owners, is still a brutal enterprise. In the book’s beginning, Washington is a slave child on a plantation. Told in 17 chapters, the book follows 40 years of Washington’s life. Eventually Washington would become the face of American race relations, a bridge between those who sought to understand the new reality of post-slavery America, and those who continued to flee from its shadow, even after emancipation. It chronicles an arduous climb up the social ladder with a starting point so low that Washington’s ascent to establish the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama reads like fiction. Originally appearing in 1900 serialized form, it was later bound as a book and now makes frequent appearances on the curriculums of high school and university classes.

Washington is an essential, seminal slave narrative.

Up From Slavery: An Autobiography by Booker T.

The story of slavery booker t washington