Booker T. Washington Up from Slavery Chapter 1 Summary

After working in the coal mine for some time, his mother found a position for him as a house boy for the Ruffner Family. He went to live with Ruffner’s with many fears and doubts. Mrs. Viola Ruffner had the reputation of being very strict and hard to please. While staying at the Ruffner household Booker learned the exact way to have things; clean, neat, and orderly. Mrs. Ruffner taught him for a few hours in the afternoon. She was his first real teacher that gave him a great part of his education.

Booker T Washington was one of the best advocates in his time. Growing up in slavery and out coming the horrifying struggles of the 1870’s was a great effort. Born in the era were black people were like flies he found a determination to succeed and discovered many powers in life.

Washington was often looked at as an “Uncle Tom” because of the things he did, such as advising blacks to remain in the South and to avoid politics and protest in favor of economic self-help and industrial education. He eventually became a powerful political boss, friend of white businessmen like Andrew Carnegie, and advisor of some presidents. Washington publicly accepted without protest racial segregation and voting discrimination, but secretly financed and directed many court suits against such proscriptions of civil rights. To Washington his ideas was obvious and clear, by earning the respect of whites they would either help blacks or deal with their crime against humanity that will eventually bring them down.

“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” –Booker T. Washing. Booker Taliaferro Washington was born in Hale’s Ford, Virginia on April 5th, 1856 to Jane Burroughs and an unknown White man. Washington was married three times. His first wife was Fannie N. Smith from Malden, West Virginia. Booker and Fannie were married in the summer of 1882 and had one child together named Portia M. Washington. Fannie died two years later in May 1884. The second wife was Olivia A. Davidson in 1885. Olivia was a teacher in Mississippi and Tennessee. She then worked as a school teacher in Tuskegee and that is how she met Booker T. she was an assistant principal. Olivia and

Up from Slavery’ is a notable African-American figure, who endured many hardships from a child, up until an adult. This man is known as Booker T. Washington. He was born into slavery in Virginia. Inside this book, you’ll learn about his childhood, his love for education and many other things after he became a freeman. In this precise, my group and I will discuss the pros and cons of ‘’Up from Slavery” by Booker T. Washington. In “Up from Slavery” we enjoyed the fact that Booker T. Washington did not feel sorry for himself, but felt for the African-American race. One of the cons we disliked was how the author didn’t elaborate on slavery neither did the author go into depth of it. Adding to one of the strengths of the book was loving the fact Washington illustrated that African-Americans made do with what they had.

and got a job as a waiter. Soon after this period of time he got a

African Americans were freed after the Civil War with the thirteenth amendment, which emancipated all slaves in the United States. Even though they were free, African Americans were not treated as equals because of the Jim Crow Laws, sharecropping, and segregation. Two African American leaders in the late 19th and 20th century – Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois – both longed for black equality and civil rights, yet each had a very different method to achieve this. Booker T. Washington intended for African Americans to eventually obtain equality, but his plan of racial accommodation betrayed their interests. However, W.E.B Du Bois had a better method for bringing social equality to the African Americans, since he made gaining equality one of his main focuses; therefore, he was right between the two.

Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois were very important African American leaders in the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They both felt that African Americans should not be treated unequally in education and civil rights. They had beliefs that education is crucial for the African American community where they stressed that educating African Americans would lead them into obtaining government positions, possibly resulting in social change. Washington and Du Bois had similar goals to achieve racial equality in the United States, but there approaches were very different in educating the lives of the black population. Washington was conservative, who felt that the subordination to white leaders was essential for African Americans in becoming successful to gain political power. On the other hand, Du Bois voiced his opinions through public literature and protest, making it clear that discrimination among blacks were intolerable. The opposing ideas of these African American leaders are illustrated in Du Bois’ short story, “Of the Coming of John”, where Du Bois implies his opposition to Washington’s ideas. He shows that the subordination of educated black individuals does not result in gaining respect or equality from the white community.

Booker T. Washington was a man beyond words. His perseverance and will to work were well known throughout the United States. He rose from slavery, delivering speech after speech expressing his views on how to uplift America's view of the Negro. He felt that knowledge was power, not just knowledge of "books", but knowledge of agricultural and industrial trades. He felt that the Negro would rise to be an equal in American society through hard work. Washington founded a school on these principles, and it became the world's leader in agricultural and industrial education for the Negro. As the world watched him put his heart and soul into his school, Tuskegee Institute, he gained

Fredrick’s first journey away from the eastern shore was in the Baltimore where he resided for seven years of his young adult life. He wished he was back in the eastern shore as the boys in Baltimore pounced on him teased him about being an eastern shore at every corner. “After all, the home plantation was more desirable place of residence that home on Alliciana Street, Baltimore.” Miss Sopha his “mistress” (his master’s wife) made his stay a little more comfortable on the plantation. She made sure he had a comfortable straw bed with blankets and clean clothes. His job on the plantation was to run errands and to take care of the master’s child. His mistress would read the bible aloud every night while her husband was away. When he husbands came home and found that his slave was reading he then explained to his wife the rules of slavery and told her it was unlawful to do so, in his own word he spoke “If you give a nigger an inch he will take an ell, he should know nothing but the will of his master and learn to obey it. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world.” Hearing these harsh words spill from no only stirred up a sort of rebellion, but awakened vital thought of how the white

The era of Jim Crow began after the end of Reconstruction in 1877, in which through the rebuilding of the South, whites established laws and customs that forced freed slaves to stay marginalized and targeted by Southern whites. The purpose of these Jim Crow ideas was to keep blacks and white separated, and to also keep blacks from progressing in society. For instance, Southern whites forced blacks to take literacy tests before they could be considered able to vote. From the start of this Jim Crow era, racial compromise was already occurring. One of the most obvious examples of this compromise comes from the real name of the era. “Jim Crow” was a name used in a

Booker T. Washington was born, into slavery, on April 5th, 1856 in Hale’s Ford, Virginia. He was nine years old when his family was emancipated, and they moved to West Virginia. It wasn’t until after he moved that he began to receive an education. He eventually graduated from the Hampton Institute; he worked through the time he was in school in order to pay for his education. He went on to later become the leader of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama – a position he held until the day he died. He made huge contributions in the African-American community, and was one of their strongest leaders in the fight for their rights. He advocated strongly for the right to education and for social issues.

The autobiography of Booker T. Washing titled Up From Slavery is a rich narrative of the man's life from slavery to one of the founders of the Tuskegee Institute. The book takes us through one of the most dynamic periods in this country's history, especially African Americans. I am very interested in the period following the Civil War and especially in the transformation of African Americans from slaves to freemen. Up From Slavery provides a great deal of information on this time period and helped me to better understand the transition. Up From Slavery provided a narrative on Washington's life, as well as his views on education and integration of African Americans. All though this book was

Booker T. Washington was one of the most well-known African American educators of all time. Lessons from his life recordings and novelistic writings are still being talked and learned about today. His ideas of the accommodation of the Negro people and the instillation of a good work ethic into every student are opposed, though, by some well-known critics of both past and current times. They state their cases by claiming the Negro’s should not have stayed quiet and worked their way to wear they did, they should have demanded equal treatment from the southern whites and claimed what was previously promised to them. Also, they state that Washington did not really care about equality or respect, but about a status boost in his own life. Both

Douglass gives detailed anecdotes of his and others experience with the institution of slavery to reveal the hidden horrors. He includes personal accounts he received while under the control of multiple different masters. He analyzes the story of his wife’s cousin’s death to provide a symbol of outrage due to the unfairness of the murderer’s freedom. He states, “The offence for which this girl was thus murdered was this: She had been set that night to mind Mrs. Hicks’s baby, and during the night she fell asleep, and the baby cried.” This anecdote, among many others, is helpful in persuading the reader to understand the severity of rule slaveholders hold above their slaves. This strategy displays the idea that slaves were seen as property and could be discarded easily.