Up From Slavery and The Atlanta Compromise Speech: Illustrated Black History Collection

by Booker T. Washington

A nice, unabridged edition of this classic with 28 photographs and illustrations, including the text of his influential 1895 Atlanta Compromise Speech
Up from Slavery is the 1901 autobiography of American educator Booker T. Washington. The book describes his personal experience of having to work to rise up from the position of a slave child during the Civil War, to the difficulties and obstacles he overcame to get an education at the new Hampton Institute, to his work establishing vocational schools—most notably the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. His goal was to help black people and other disadvantaged minorities learn useful, marketable skills and work to pull themselves, as a race, up by the bootstraps. He reflects on the generosity of both teachers and philanthropists who helped in educating blacks and Native Americans. In 1998, the Modern Library listed the book at No. 3 on its list of the 100 best nonfiction books of the 20th century.

204 pages, Paperback

Published July 8, 2020

About the author

Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, orator, author and the dominant leader of the African-American community nationwide from the 1890s to his death. Born to slavery and freed by the Civil War in 1865, as a young man, became head of the new Tuskegee Institute, then a teachers' college for blacks. It became his base of operations. His "Atlanta Exposition" speech of 1895 appealed to middle class whites across the South, asking them to give blacks a chance to work and develop separately, while implicitly promising not to demand the vote. White leaders across the North, from politicians to industrialists, from philanthropists to churchmen, enthusiastically supported Washington, as did most middle class blacks. He was the organizer and central figure of a network linking like-minded black leaders throughout the nation and in effect spoke for Black America throughout his lifetime. Meanwhile a more militant northern group, led by W. E. B. Du Bois rejected Washington's self-help and demanded recourse to politics, referring to the speech dismissively as "The Atlanta Compromise". The critics were marginalized until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, at which point more radical black leaders rejected Washington's philosophy and demanded federal civil rights laws.

Reviews

[Joel Petrocelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve read this book multiple times. It is my all time favorite book.

[Robert Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely fascinating book about an accomplished man who let nothing get in his way of achieving his dreams and helping others to do the same. This is a must read for all Americans.