Must Read Autobiographies - IV

Up From Slavery

Booker T. Washington

Booker T Washington was a slave child. He struggled tremendously to get an education and start vocational schools, most notably Tuskegee Institute in Albama, for imparting education and professional skill to the black people. This book is a 1901 autobiography of Booker T. Washington.

The America of 1980s and 90s belived that the black people could not have survived without slavery. The blacks were associated with stupidity, low morality and criminality. There was intense white hostility towards the black people.Being a black, Booker was susceptible to white violence. When violence erupted, he tempered his speech to see that the situation was contained.

The book begins with a vivid description on the life of slaves in plantation, the hardships and insults that they faced.

Booker has an intense desire for education since he was a child. His mother supported him in whatever way she could.

Booker struggles to earn enough money for educating himself in the Hampton Institute. He was willing to do manual labor for earning money. After the first school vacations, Booker goes home but returns to the school early, so that he could lend his hand to his teachers for cleaning the classrooms. When Washington returns the next summer, he is elected to teach local students, young and old, through a night school, Sunday school, and private lessons.

In May 1881, General Armstrong, one of Booker's well wishers and an influential black man, told Washington he had received a letter from a man in Alabama to recommend someone to take charge of a "colored school" in Tuskegee. The man writing the letter thought that there was not a "colored" person to fill the role and asked him to recommend a white man. The general wrote back and to tell him about Washington, and he was accepted for the position.

Tuskegee was a town of 2,000 population located in the so called "Black Belt" of the South. The population of Tuskegee was equally distributed between whites and blacks. In nearby counties there were six African-American people to one white person. 

Once at Tuskegee, his first task was to find a place to open the school and secured a rundown "shanty" and African-American Methodist church. He also traveled around the area and acquainted himself with the local people. He describes some of the families he met and who worked in the cotton fields. He saw that most of the farmers were in debt and schools were generally taught in churches or log cabins and these had few or no provisions. Some, for example, had no means of heating in the winter and one school had one book to share between five children. Booker believed that with bookish education alone, the black people could not be empowered to lift themselves up. The goal was established to prepare students of Tuskegee to become teachers, farmers, and overall moral people. Washington’s first days at Tuskegee are described in this chapter, as is his method of working. 

Facing difficulties in arranging resources and opposition from some whites, Tuskegee school was opened on July 4, 1881.

The school began with 30 students and by the end of the first month the number increased to 50. There were almost equal numbers of male and female students. A co-teacher came at the end of the first 6 weeks. This was Olivia A. Davidson and she later became his wife. 

She and Washington agreed that the students needed more than a 'book education' and they thought they must show them how to care for their bodies and how to earn a living after they had left the school. They tried to educate them in a way that would make them want to stay in these agricultural districts. Many of the students came initially to study so that they would not have to work with their hands, whereas Washington aimed for them to be capable of all sorts of labor and to not be ashamed of it.

The school gradually expanded by purchasing new farms and cultivating them, constructing new buildings. New donors, including some from North, helped the school grow. The students of the school, after much effort started making bricks for their buildings. Enthused by their success, the students take their creativity to other fields such as making vehicles and furnitures. The students were taugh the use of toothbrush. Toothbrushes were not used in the counties in those days.

Washington travelled north to secure additional funding for the Institute with which he had much success. Two years after a meeting with one man, the Institute received a cheque of $10,000 and, from another couple, a gift of $50,000. Washington felt great pressure for his school and students to succeed, for failure would reflect poorly on the ability of the race. It is this time period Washington begins working with Andrew Carnegie, proving to Carnegie that this school was worthy of support. 

Washington propounded the philosophy that "full exercise of political rights is going to be a matter of natural, slow growth, not an over-night, gourd-vine affair. I do not believe that the Negro should cease voting…but I do believe that in his voting he should more and more be influenced by those of intelligence and character who are his next-door neighbors…I do not believe that any state should make a law that permits an ignorant and poverty-stricken white man to vote, and prevents a black man in the same condition from voting. Such a law is not only unjust, but it will react, as all unjust laws do, in time; for the effect of such a law is to encourage the Negro to secure education and property. I believe that in time, through the operation of intelligence and friendly race relations, all cheating at the ballot box in the South will cease."

The author is married a third time and they are offered an opportunity to travel to Europe. Mixed emotions influenced their decision to go: Washington had always dreamed of traveling to Europe, but he feared the reaction of the people, for so many times had he seen individuals of his race achieve success and then turned away from the people.

Washington describes the greatest surprise of his life upon receiving an honorary degree from Harvard Universsity, the first awarded to an African American. Another great honor for Washington and Tuskegee was the visit of President William McKinley to the institute, an act which McKinley hoped to impress upon citizens his "interest and faith in the race. 

Here was a man who was often accused of playing soft on the rights of black people. Given the conditions of severe hostility in those days, he chose a path of uplifting his race ensuring that his efforts were not undermined by race violence.

Namaste

Prabir