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Washington
1901
The gospel of self-help, told by the man who staked his life on it.
Up From Slavery
Booker T. Washington · 1901
Washington's 1901 memoir is both a genuinely gripping founder's story — a man who talks his way from a coal mine to a five-minute audience with a president — and the fullest statement of the philosophy that made him the most powerful Black leader in America, and the target of its sharpest internal critique. Read alongside W. E. B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk, which answers Washington's program point by point, Up From Slavery is the origin document of a debate about how change happens — through economic leverage or through immediate political demand — that the book itself never fully resolves, and that Washington's own life makes more complicated than either side's slogans suggest.
19 chapters · 76,464 words · ~5.8 hr read
Contents
Front Matter
Washington's own account of how the book came together, and Walter Hines Page's introduction situating the Hampton-Tuskegee philosophy of education.
Slavery, Freedom, and Education
From birth into slavery through emancipation, boyhood labor, the journey to Hampton Institute, and the early teaching years that shaped Washington's philosophy of self-help.
Building Tuskegee
The founding and construction of the Tuskegee Institute, built literally by its own students — from a borrowed shanty to student-made bricks, dormitories, and a working fundraising operation.
- 9Early Days At Tuskegee~12 min
- 10Teaching School In A Stable And A Hen-House~16 min
- 11Anxious Days And Sleepless Nights~15 min
- 12A Harder Task Than Making Bricks Without Straw~16 min
- 13Making Their Beds Before They Could Lie On Them~14 min
- 14Raising Money~20 min
- 15Two Thousand Miles For A Five-Minute Speech~21 min
The Atlanta Address and Public Life
The 1895 Atlanta Exposition address that made Washington a national figure, and the years of public speaking, honors, family life, and travel that followed.