Up from Slavery: An Autobiography

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY


By Booker T. Washington




This volume is dedicated to my Wife
MRS. MARGARET JAMES WASHINGTON
And to my Brother
MR. JOHN H. WASHINGTON
Whose patience, fidelity, and hard work have gone far
to make the work at Tuskegee successful.




CONTENTS

 Preface
 Introduction
 UP FROM SLAVERY
 Chapter I. A Slave Among Slaves
 Chapter II. Boyhood Days
 Chapter III. The Struggle For An Education
 Chapter IV. Helping Others
 Chapter V. The Reconstruction Period
 Chapter VI. Black Race And Red Race
 Chapter VII. Early Days At Tuskegee
 Chapter VIII. Teaching School In A Stable And A Hen-House
 Chapter IX. Anxious Days And Sleepless Nights
 Chapter X. A Harder Task Than Making Bricks Without Straw
 Chapter XI. Making Their Beds Before They Could Lie On Them
 Chapter XII. Raising Money
 Chapter XIII. Two Thousand Miles For A Five-Minute Speech
 Chapter XIV. The Atlanta Exposition Address
 Chapter XV. The Secret Of Success In Public Speaking
 Chapter XVI. Europe
 Chapter XVII. Last Words




UP FROM SLAVERY:




Preface


This volume is the outgrowth of a series of articles, dealing with
incidents in my life, which were published consecutively in the
Outlook. While they were appearing in that magazine I was constantly
surprised at the number of requests which came to me from all parts of
the country, asking that the articles be permanently preserved in book
form. I am most grateful to the Outlook for permission to gratify these
requests.

I have tried to tell a simple, straightforward story, with no attempt
at embellishment. My regret is that what I have attempted to do has
been done so imperfectly. The greater part of my time and strength is
required for the executive work connected with the Tuskegee Normal and
Industrial Institute, and in securing the money necessary for the
support of the institution. Much of what I have said has been written
on board trains, or at hotels or railroad stations while I have been
waiting for trains, or during the moments that I could spare from my
work while at Tuskegee. Without the painstaking and generous assistance
of Mr. Max Bennett Thrasher I could not have succeeded in any
satisfactory degree.




Introduction


The details of Mr. Washington’s early life, as frankly set down in “Up
from Slavery,” do not give quite a whole view of his education. He had
the training that a coloured youth receives at Hampton, which, indeed,
the autobiography does explain. But the reader does not get his
intellectual pedigree, for Mr. Washington himself, perhaps, does not as
clearly understand it as another man might. The truth is he had a
training during the most impressionable period of his life that was
very extraordinary, such a training as few men of his generation have
had. To see its full meaning one must start in the Hawaiian Islands
half a century or more ago.* There Samuel Armstrong, a youth of
missionary parents, earned enough money to pay his expenses at an
American college. Equipped with this small sum and the earnestness that
the undertaking implied, he came to Williams College when Dr. Mark
Hopkins was president. Williams College had many good things for youth
in that day, as it has in this, but the greatest was the strong
personality of its famous president. Every student does not profit by a
great teacher; but perhaps no young man ever came under the influence
of Dr. Hopkins, whose whole nature was so ripe for profit by such an
experience as young Armstrong. He lived in the family of President
Hopkins, and thus had a training that was wholly out of the common; and
this training had much to do with the development of his own strong
character, whose originality and force we are only beginning to
appreciate.

   * For this interesting view of Mr. Washington’s education, I am
   indebted to Robert C. Ogden, Esq., Chairman of the Board of Trustees
   of Hampton Institute and the intimate friend of General Armstrong
   during the whole period of his educational work.

In turn, Samuel Armstrong, the founder of Hampton Institute, took up
his work as a trainer of youth. He had very raw material, and doubtless
most of his pupils failed to get the greatest lessons from him; but, as
he had been a peculiarly receptive pupil of Dr. Hopkins, so Booker
Washington became a peculiarly receptive pupil of his. To the formation
of Mr. Washington’s character, then, went the missionary zeal of New
England, influenced by one of the strongest personalities in modern
education, and the wide-reaching moral earnestness of General Armstrong
himself. These influences are easily recognizable in Mr. Washington
to-day by men who knew Dr. Hopkins and General Armstrong.

I got the cue to Mr. Washington’s character from a very simple incident
many years ago. I had never seen him, and I knew little about him,
except that he was the head of a school at Tuskegee, Alabama. I had
occasion to write to him, and I addressed him as “The Rev.