Up from Slavery (Dover Thrift Editions)

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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 black economic empowerment, land ownership, and self-help inspired generations of black 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 black Americans' success. The potency of his philosophies are alive today in the nationalist and conservative camps that compose the complex quilt of black American society.

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Autobiography of influential spokesman and former slave who became a major figure in the struggle for equal rights.

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Vividly recounting Washington's life--his childhood as a slave, struggle for education, founding and presidency of the Tuskegee Institute, and meetings with the country's leaders, this book reveals the conviction he held that the black man's salvation lay in education, industriousness and self-reliance.

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Booker T. Washington.......2007-08-08

Very interesting perspective on slavery from someone who actually lived through it. All slave tales are not alike.

Booker T Washington.......2007-05-09

Product was on time and in good condition. Would order from you again.

Well-written story of an amazing man.......2007-05-08

I knew next to nothing about Booker T. Washington prior to reading this book. Now I feel honored to have had his story shared with me. Despite the risk of sounding cliche, he has become an inspiration and hero to me. If not for his convictions and spirit, he would have been quite ordinary. Instead, he accomplished incredible goals, overcoming unimaginable feats, and has reached an inumerable amount of people, generation after generation. This book is a mainstay on my bedside table. Required reading for all.

Inspirational Autobiography.......2007-04-10

This autobiography of an African American intellectual will inspire you. See how Washington rose from nothing to hold a respectable place in American history.

Inspiring & Uplifting.......2007-03-29

The life story of Booker T. Washington was uplifting and inspiring. This shows that a person can arise from the ashes of their life, and make something worthwhile of themselves. Being born a slave was a major set back in their lives. Booker was determined to received and education at any cost, and he succeeded. Nothing was handed to him. Hard work and perserverance was the only way he could accomplish his goals.
Through turbalent times after the Civil War, Booker united the white and black race. Together they worked to build one of the finest educational institution in the south-Tuskegee, renamed Tuskegee University.

Then Darkness Fled: The Liberating Wisdom of Booker T. Washington (Leaders in Action Series)

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An Amazing Man
Terrific
Outstanding biography of an outstanding Black American.

Then Darkness Fled: The Liberating Wisdom of Booker T. Washington (Leaders in Action Series)
Stephen Mansfield
Manufacturer: Cumberland House Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 158182324X

Book Description

During his life, Booker T. Washington was among the most celebrated educators, authors, and statesmen of his day. He walked side by side with Frederick Douglass, Mark Twain, H. G. Wells, Theodore Roosevelt, and Andrew Carnegie. He was the first African American to dine with the president in the White House and the first to have tea with the queen of England. He was the first African American to receive honorary degrees from Harvard and Dartmouth, the first African American to be honored on a postage stamp, the first African American to be commemorated on a coin, the first African American to have a naval vessel named for him, and the first African American to have schools named after him.

To many African Americans today, Washington points the way toward prosperity and sophistication. Today his spiritual and economic wisdom is being reclaimed as a proven path of racial advance, and his ideas are again gaining currency among upwardly mobile African Americans. In this brief volume, Stephen Mansfield reviews the course of Washington's life and highlights those principles and practices that undergirded the great educator's ability to empower all people to be the best they can be.

Customer Reviews:

An Amazing Man.......2007-05-02

This book is one of those rare gems that, if you're really fortunate, you come across from time to time. I received it as a gift from one of my mentors, Charlie Jones, who had, for some time now, been speaking of Booker T. Washington as one of his heroes. Having only a very surface knowledge of Mr. Washington - knowing that he was born a slave and went on to become founder of the famed Tuskegee Institute - he was a hero of mine, as well. After all, one could only imagine what he had to overcome to have achieved all he did.

However, after reading this book by Pastor Stephen Mansfield, the greatness of Mr. Washington simply came alive for me. He was a man of character, a man of faith, a dreamer and a doer; a man who moved mountains and moved hearts.

He had a plan - he had a dream - for taking his people from a horrible situation and helping them to move up and become successful in every way.

Unfortunately, as the author points out, he was fought every step along the way - often most by those he was trying to help and, in time, and long after he died in 1915, was disparaged by many as simply naïve, foolish, a misguided optimist, betrayer to his people.

Of course, none of this is true. Reading the story of Booker T. Washington in 2007 we can look back in hindsight and see that everything he taught - regarding the importance of character, thrift, knowledge, wisdom, forgiveness, love, persistence, delayed gratification, humility, etc. - is the way to build oneself, one's people and one's nation.

Only now is this man's wisdom and greatness beginning to once again be recognized and embraced. This book should be read by anyone and everyone looking to achieve greatness in their life. Read this book and you'll have the roadmap for doing so.

Booker T. Washington was a wonderful man; a hero. And the author, Pastor Mansfield, did a superb job in telling the story.

P.S. By the way, if you get an opportunity to read the booklet, "Character Building" by Booker T. Washington it will also be WELL worth your time. It's a reprinting of a number of his "Sunday Evening Talks" to his students and faculty members. The advice and wisdom that Mr. Washington shared is simply amazing.

Terrific.......2003-06-26

In another sterling volume of the Leaders in Action series, Stephen Mansfield here outlines the life and character of Booker T. Washington. In vivacious voice and moving magniloquence, Mansfield traces Washington's path from slavery to his founding of Tuskegee Institute. He shows the difficulties Washington surpassed in reaching his goals, and the principles that helped him make it. In the words of Washington, "Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succed." By this standard, Booker T. Washington was an astonishingly successful man.

Washington wrote his own autobiography, _Up From Slavery_, which must certainly not be neglected. But Mansfield's biography is also a criticial read because he includes facts that the autobiographer was too modest to mention, and he highlights wonderful aspects of Washington's character that humility prevented him from including. This biography doesn't contain the wonderful self-analysis and insight of Booker himself - but it does contain all the benefits of a third person account.

One thing I really appreciated about this book was its terrific analysis of slavery and inter-race reconciliation. Expounding Booker's opinion, Mansfield blames both whites and blacks for the problems that cropped up after the Civil War. Whites needed to repent of their brutal treatment of slaves and actually begin considering blacks more than mere animals; and blacks needed to repent of their spirit of bitterness toward their white enslavers, and begin working hard and leaving no excuse for disrespect of blacks. Too many books on reconciliation have practically advocated bitterness, hatred, and laziness when what is really needed is Washington's outlook of forgiveness and hard work. This book offers relief from such pride.

To wrap up, this is a great biography. Good history, good style, and good content. Buy it.

Outstanding biography of an outstanding Black American........2000-03-03

Then Darkness Fled is a celebration of the life of Booker T. Washinghton and tells of a man who dined with heads of state and became the first Afro-American to receive honorary degrees from Harvard and Dartmouth. Chapters survey both his achievements and his life in this lively coverage.

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If you need to be humbled....read this book
Men of Sacrifice

Unshakable Faith
John Perry
Manufacturer: Multnomah
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1576734935
Release Date: 1999-11-02

Book Description

Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver, children of slaves, overcame seemingly insurmountable barriers to find renown in the fields of education and science. Both men retained strong personalities that occasionally came into conflict. Like iron sharpening iron, their differences served to refine and define their collaborative work. An abiding faith in Christ and sense of divine appointment guided them through a world of dark prejudice with humility and self-confidence. They quietly proved their oppressors wrong and along the way made remarkable discoveries and contributions that have inestimably benefited mankind to this day.

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If you need to be humbled....read this book.......2003-02-11

I am reminded by people like George Carver and Booker Washington that I have done so little, while they accomplished so very much. Besides the awe inspiring historical accounts of these two saints, the book is written with a kind of zeal that is obvious to the reader. It is obvious that the author loved writing it as much as we enjoy reading it (either that or he fakes it really well).

I have only a few books that I will make my children read (when they come of age)....this is one of them.

Men of Sacrifice.......2000-04-20

John Perry has delivered the goods as a researcher and biographer. In this book about two luminaries of the 20th Century, who brought the light of their torches from the 19th, we have a book that will inspire everyone. There are places where it will not leave you tearless.

Balance, honesty and contextual historicism are characteristic of Perry's work.

Most reading it will concur with this reviewer that Perry has found a niche in reminding us of those persons of sacrifice who are such a rare type of leader in this 21st century.

Book Description

The first volume of Louis R. Harlan's biography of Booker T. Washington was published to wide acclaim and won the 1973 Bancroft Prize. This, the second volume, completes one of the most significant biographies of this generation. Booker T. Washington was the most powerful black American of his time, and here he is captured at his zenith. Harlan reveals Washington's complex personality--in sharp contrast to his public demeanor, he was a ruthless power borker whose nod or frown could determine the careers of blacks in politics, education, and business. Harlan chronicles the challenge Washington faced from W.E.B. Du Bois and other blacks, and shows how growing opposition forced him to change his methods of leadership just before his death in 1915. Also available: Volume 1, $10.95k, 501915-6, 394 pp., plates

Customer Reviews:

deliverer with human traits.......2004-01-26

_I think you will make a mistake if you will let your mind dwell too much upon American prejudice, or any other racial prejudice. The thing is for one to get above such things. If one gets in the habit of continually thinking and talking about race prejudice, he soon gets gets to the point where he is fit for little that is worth doing. In the northern part of the United States, there are a number of colored people who make their lives miserable, because all their talk is about race prejudice_ Booker T. Washington in a letter to his daughter Portia then living and studying in Europe.(117)

I am greatly impressed with this text, BOOKER T. WASINGTON, The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901-1915. Professor Louis R. Harlan earned the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for History with this biography along with the Bancroft Prize and the Beveridge Award of the American Historical Association. The principle source is the Booker T Washington Papers in the Division of Manuscripts of the LIbrary of Congress, a rich, expanding collection of approximately a million letters, speeches, reports, newspaper clippings, and other documents. Professor Harlan is the editor of the published source that extends, currently, to 14 volumes. This material is available on-line in an Open-Book format at the site maintained by the University of Illinois Press (www.historycooperative.org/btw).

This book begins in 1901, when Booker T. Washington at the age of forty-five was approaching the zenith of his fame and influence, and ends with his death in 1915. It is a biographical study in the sense that its focus is on the complex, enigmatic figure of Washington, the most powerful black minority-group boss of his time. It also recounts the inner life and struggles of the small black middle class in that generation once removed from slavery, as a coterie of college-bred black men and women challenged Washington's powerful coalition of northern, white philanthropists, southern white paternalists, black businessmen, and such members of the black professional class as he could attract to his side.

Washington's wizardry - his skill of maneuver and ability to make the most of bad circumstances - was his strong point as a leader. His greatest failing was his inability to reverse the hard times for blacks during what whites called the Progressive Era. The same era which the historian Rayford Whittingham Logan (1897-1981) called the nadir of Afro-American history. As Washington's influence declined in his last years, W.E.B DuBois, a strong critic of Washington, and the founders at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) sought relief through the court system.

It was this legal strategy of the NAACP in the 20th Century that culminated in the successful Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, and it is Washington's work-ethic, self-help, self-improvement and particularly, style of accomomdation that have been forgotten or discredited. This text helps us remember what Washington accomplished, however, more importantly, Professor Harlan's meticulous investigations reveal that the character of Washington is difficult to articulate succintly.

Washington's correspondence with the large donors to Tuskegee does not reveal a conspiracy, either large or small, to prepare Tuskegee's students to become wage-workers in the corporate structure. The typical donor sent his check rather than his advice.,...Washington's efforts at Tuskegee Institute were to train students to become independent small businessmen, farmers, and teachers rather than wage-earners or servants of white employers. At the same time, it is clear that Washington flattered and cajoled the very rich and never challenged the appropriateness of their status at the peak of the American success pyramid.

Tuskegee became a mecca for not only Africans but West Indians and Asians. As his writings were translated into many foreign languages, he became the most famous black man in the world, and his fame drew foreigners to him like a magnet. All manner of men, American missionaries, European colonialists, Afican nationalists, Buddhist reformers, and Japanese modernizers sought to enlist his aid. On the one hand were whites who sought to aid in introducing plantation agriculture into colonial areas. On the other hand Africans and Asians hoped to find in Tuskegee industrial education and Washington's philosophy of self-help a source of strength to resist the political and cultural impreialism of the Europeans. Washington sought to accomodate all of these contradictory propositions.

While intrepid research has uncovered new material that lends fresh insight, rather than illuminating Washington for compassion to his motives, the added light only casts more shadows. Utterly at variance with the Sunday-school morality he publicly professed, there was also a more feral, more power-hungry Washington, inordinately involved in politics, and particularly the poitics of patronage. Few people, even those affected, such as W.E.B DuBois and Mary White Ovington, knew the extent to which Washington refused to meet our preconceived notions of how a great leader should behave.

Inexplicable human fraility, aside, as a guide for the black community, Washington had a concrete program of industrial education and the promotion of small business as the avenue of black advancement "up from slavery" and into the middle class. This program may have been anachronistic preparation for the age of mass production, urbanization, and corporate gigantism then coming into being; but it had considerable social realism for a black population which was, until long after Washington's death, predominantly rural and southern. It gave purpose and dignity to black working-class lives of toil and struggle, and also was well attuned to the growth and changing character of black business in Washington's day. He championed the emerging black business class as the leaders of black communities, and they in turn, through the National Negro Business League, became the backbone of Washington's following.

Washington's followers found hope in his message that fortified them in hopeless situations. During his time, he was exalted as a type of Moses who would lead his people to the promised land as welcome participants in the mainstream of society. For many in the US and around the world, his teachings were a type of deliverance from their oppressive circumstances. Moses had quite a few faults, as all deliverers do, and one of these faults prevented him from entering the promised land of Canaan. Even with all of his great abilities to accommodate the ruling class majority, his ability to conquer overwhelming obstacles, Booker T. Washington's inability to accomodate the strategies of the NAACP, who were themselves uncompromising, weakened his effectiveness.

After reading this remarkable text, I see Booker T. Washington as a man with great accomplishments and failings perhaps as great. Even with his shortcomings, he was exceptional as he provided his followers hope and lifted their spirit. Professor Harlan has brought to life a man of enormous complexity, who will never be completely understood or known which makes Booker T. Washington much like the people of which I claim familiarity.

PEACE

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The Story of Booker T. Washington (Cornerstones of Freedom)

The Story of Booker T. Washington (Cornerstones of Freedom. Second Series)
Pat McKissack , and Fredrick McKissack
Manufacturer: Children's Press (CT)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding

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ASIN: 0516047582

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The Story of Booker T. Washington (Cornerstones of Freedom).......2000-04-11

This was an excellent work overviewing the major achievements of Booker T. Washington. Concentrating on his years at Tuskegee Institute, the authors do a good job portraying Washington's beliefs while explaining the political climate at the time. Washington's critics of the time were also acknowledged and their views represented. The book also explains what a great example Tuskegee Institute and Washington's educational ideas were for others establishing similar institutions.

Booker T. Washington: Great American Educator (Graphic Biographies)

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Booker T. Washington: Great American Educator (Graphic Biographies)
Eric Braun
Manufacturer: Capstone Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding

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ASIN: 0736846301

Three African-American Classics: Up from Slavery, The Souls of Black Folk and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

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Three African-American Classics: Up from Slavery, The Souls of Black Folk and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
W. E. B. Du Bois , Frederick Douglass , and Booker T. Washington
Manufacturer: Dover Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0486457575

Book Description

Essential reading for students of African-American history, this collection represents three highly influential leaders. Washington and Douglass, both born into slavery, recount their rise from bondage to international recognition. Du Bois' landmark essays counsel a more aggressive approach to the civil rights movement.

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Up From Slavery

Manufacturer: Bantam
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Up from Slavery (Signet Classics)

ASIN: B000E82VRI

Product Description

Up From Slavery is the autobigraphy of one of the most remarkable men America has produced, a man born in slavery but lifted by his own vision and perseverance to a position of leadership and power. The son of a slave woman, Booker T. Washington struggled to acquire an education for himself, then dedicated his life to educating others. His is a story of almost unbelievable devotion and selflessness, an inspiration to people all over the world as long as men recognize the value of courage and human dignity.

Booker T. Washington: Great American Educator (Graphic Library: Graphic Biographies)

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Booker T. Washington: Great American Educator (Graphic Library: Graphic Biographies)
Eric Braun
Manufacturer: Capstone Press
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0736861904

The Education of Booker T. Washington: American Democracy and the Idea of Race Relations

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The Education of Booker T. Washington: American Democracy and the Idea of Race Relations
Michael Rudolph West
Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0231130481

Book Description

Booker T. Washington has long held an ambiguous position in the pantheon of black leadership. Lauded by some in his own lifetime as a black George Washington, he was also derided by others as a Benedict Arnold. In The Education of Booker T. Washington, Michael West offers a major reinterpretation of one of the most complex and controversial figures in American history. West reveals the personal and political dimensions of Washington's journey "up from slavery." He explains why Washington's ideas resonated so strongly in the post-Reconstruction era and considers their often negative influence in the continuing struggle for equality in the United States. West's work also establishes a groundwork for understanding the ideological origins of the civil rights movement and discusses Washington's views on the fate of race and nation in light of those of Thomas Jefferson, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr., and others.

West argues that Washington's analysis was seen as offering a "solution" to the problem of racial oppression in a nation professing its belief in democracy. That solution was the idea of "race relations." In practice, this theory buttressed segregation by supposing that African Americans could prosper within Jim Crow's walls and without the normal levers by which other Americans pursued their interests. Washington did not, West contends, imagine a way to perfect democracy and an end to the segregationist policies of southern states. Instead, he offered an ideology that would obscure the injustices of segregation and preserve some measure of racial peace.

White Americans, by embracing Washington's views, could comfortably find a way out of the moral and political contradictions raised by the existence of segregation in a supposedly democratic society. This was (and is) Washington's legacy: a form of analysis, at once obvious and concealed, that continues to prohibit the realization of a truly democratic politics.

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