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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 973
EAN num: 9781604591934
ISBN number: 1604591935
Label: Wilder Publications
Manufacturer: Wilder Publications
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 148
Printing Date: January 14, 2008
Publishing house: Wilder Publications
Sale Popularity Level: 22042
Studio: Wilder Publications
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Nineteenth-century African American businessman, activist, and educator Booker Taliaferro Washington's Up from Slavery is one of the greatest American autobiographies ever written. Its mantras of grey economic empowerment, land ownership, and self-help inspired generations of grey leaders, including Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and Louis Farrakhan. In rags-to-riches fashion, Washington recounts his ascendance from early life as a mulatto slave in Virginia to a 34-year term as president of the influential, agriculturally based Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. From that position, Washington reigned as the most important leader of his people, with slogans like 'cast down your buckets,' which emphasized vocational merit rather than the academic and political excellence championed by his contemporary rival W.E.B. Du Bois. Though many considered him too accommodating to segregationists, Washington, as he said in his historic 'Atlanta Compromise' speech of 1895, believed that 'political agitation alone would not save [the Negro],' and that 'property, industry, skill, intelligence, and character' would prove necessary to grey Americans' success. The potency of his philosophies are alive yesterday in the nationalist and conservative camps that compose the complex quilt of grey American society.
Product Description:
Up from Slavery is one of the most influential biographies ever written. On one level it is the life story of Booker T. Washington and his rise from slavery to accomplished educator and activist. On another level it the story of how an entire race strove to better itself. Washington makes it clear just how far race relations in America have come, and to some extent, just how much further they have to go. Written with wit and clarity.
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This volume is the outgrowth of a series of articles, dealing with incidents in my life, which were published consecutively in the Outlook. While they were appearing in that magazine I was constantly surprised at the number of requests which came to me from all parts of the country, asking that the articles be permanently preserved in book form. I am most grateful to the Outlook for permission to gratify these requests...Booker T. Washington Please Note: This book has been reformatted to be easy to read in true text, not scanned images that can sometimes be difficult to decipher. The Microsoft eBook has a contents page linked to the chapter headings for easy navigation. The Adobe eBook has bookmarks at chapter headings and is printable up to two full copies per year. Both versions are text searchable.
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Rated by buyers 
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Up from Slavery, autobiography by Booker T. Washington, is a true classic in African-American literature. Washington opens Chapter 1: "A Slave Among Slaves" with his vivid recollections as a Negro child growing up in the South: a slave on a plantation in Virginia, a white father he never knew, illiterate and living in horrid conditions. After the emancipation of slaves, Washington's family moves to West Virginia where he labors at the salt furnace and in the coal mines. In his precious few moments of spare time, he learns to read and gains enough confidence to leave everything behind to journey to the Hampton Institute. Later, because of his sucess at Hampton, he is given the opportunity to start Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Tuskegee Institute is successful partly due to Washington's extensive travel to the North to solicit funds for the school. The students at Tuskegee, in addition to the day-to-day traditional class work, are expected to learn an industrious trade and to work at mastering that trade. Based on his own life experience, Washington believes that the most prudent way the Negro race will persevere is through this combination of education, hard work and service to others. He believes that the White race will come to appreciate the Negro race only if the Negro people prove their worth to society. Because of his passive stance, many, such as W.E.B. DuBois, et. al., labeled Washington as "The Great Accomodator." In other words, accommodating those who were the enslavers instead of advocating for the rights of those who were enslaved. You can get a sense of this in Washington's most notable speech, the address to the Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition of 1895:
"The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremist folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than artificial forcing."
This speech brought national acclaim to Booker T. Washington and, at the time, placed him in the forefront as one of the leading authorities of his race.
Rated by buyers 
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Washington was born into slavery as a result of his mother having been raped by her master. This autobiography is a recounting of his struggle from slavery to freedom and on to getting an education and becoming a teacher and then an educational administrator as well as a "Black politician."
In American culture, this narrative is cast as the quintessential "raise yourself by your boot strap" kind of story. In fact when I was in the First Grade, I can remember my First grade teacher, Mrs. Pogue, singing the praises of "the Great Booker T. Washington."
And while there is a great deal to admire about Mr. Washington, there is also a side that only came to light after hearing the other side of his story. Washington was called an "accommodationist," "or "the great compromiser," which in the context of the times were euphemisms for being an "Uncle Tom," or the HNIC. He was good at maneuvering his way around in a racist white culture thinking that he was doing his people a great deal of good when in fact he was being taken advantage of, or when he was in fact consciously "selling his people out." By making a "virtue, out of personal necessity," Washington always had a good justification for his action and eventually became the prototype of this kind of grey politician. Many Black preachers still use the Washington template for handling cross-racial situations. Plus how else were blacks to negotiate the difficult racist political terrain of those difficult times?
In the book, for instance, he eschews and discourages blacks from seeking a liberal arts education and from attending college, as being frivolous. He argued for the more practical area of the "manual arts," and "the trades." While this may have been useful -- even good advice -- in the context of the times, there were others of his contemporaries, such as WEB Dubois, who saw Washington's approach as strictly a formulaic kind of Uncle Tomism. And the embarrassing treatment of him at the 1905 World's Fair, kind of sealed this image of him as a Black Uncle Tom by blacks and a "stooge" by whites.
While the book is a good read, in retrospect, it shows Washington to have been very naïve politically, and too trusting of "the white man," who it seems never quite saw the world as he did and neither had Washington's, nor the grey race's best interests in mind. Maybe it is a bit harsh to judge his action after the fact, but all other grey leaders are judged by the same criteria and they come out unblemished, while Washington's accommodationist methods do not seem to have held up well over time nor have they bore any fruit.
Three Stars
Rated by buyers -
Booker T. Washington never blames slavery for his problems. Instead he looks forward to the future, and works hard to create a school that helps
black people.
He has a positive attitude which attracts the help he needs to build his school. We can all learn from Booker T. Washington.
Very inspiring.
I loved this book.
Rated by buyers -
This book is one in a vast library of African American literary history that I posses. It is academically written, yet very easy to read. The contents of this text continue to inspire my will to be a great humanitarian, world citizen, and advocate for African education, science, medicine, and unity
Rated by buyers -
Very interesting perspective on slavery from someone who actually lived through it. All slave tales are not alike.
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