Honesty: If I was not currently in rural Australia with only an e-reader and Project Gutenberg, I wouldn't have picked this up.That said, I'm not sure why this narrative is not wildly popular with modern audiences. Maybe it just needs to be put on a new shelf, since it reads like one of the better-selling self-help titles: Self Sufficiency 101, Starting Your Dream NonProf/Business/Institute of Higher Education, The Key to Financial Success, The Social Benefits of Dental Hygiene, The Power of Optimism, The Art of Forgiveness. This guy did it all. He covers every dearly-held American value more thoroughly and succinctly than I've ever seen. In truth, Mr. Washington is just too good for us. Mr. Washington has faith in humanity. Mr. Washington is not a racist. He believes in the roughly equal ability of every person to accomplish good. He believes people recognize and reward good when they see it. He would probably not believe how incredibly easy exploitation can be, considering the difficulty he had overcoming it. Like most ambitious people, he admires wealth and prestige. But his optimism is unbounded, and as the first free generation in America, I suppose he couldn't help himself. I don't think he realized, when he counseled slow and steady progress, how slow and unsteady equality can be.

The first of the nonfiction books I read was Booker T. Washingtons Up From Slavery. Before reading this text, I knew very little about the accomplishments of Booker T. Washington, only being familiar with the nameknowing he was important to African American and US history, but not why.The short text (166 pages in total) highlights Washingtons childhood days, first as a slave and then as a struggling family in West Virginia. The book next delves into his time at Hampton Institute, where he went to school and where he later taught. The largest sum of the text was dedicated to his time as the principal of the Tuskegee Institute and his public speaking engagements during that same time.Washingtons style of writing is very enjoyable to read. He offers many antidotes and stories to go along with the points he is making, and he manages to share his personality and voice through his writing. However, I was quite taken aback by his critical outlook on Southern African Americans and his glowing approval of white Southerners. While it was clear that Washington was for the betterment of his people, and he believed that this best be achieved by the cooperation of white and black people in the US, his many of criticizing people of his own race, especially considering the long, difficult road theyve encounters, surprised me. Clearly, I was not around when this text was originally published (1901), but I would assume that the racial climate was quite difficult. I worry that a text such as Washingtons might be used to further support the racist actions and notions of some white people in the US.From additional reading, I discovered that Washington received pretty harsh criticism from W.E.B. Du Bois, as well as the NAACP, for his soft and accommodating manner. Du Bois believed that Washington should take a stronger stand for the civil rights of African Americans. However, Washington maintained that pressure and anger would not be helpful in advancing the place of African Americans in Southern society.All in all, I enjoyed reading this text. I learned quite a bit about an important figure in American history, and I was presented with a perspective different than what is usually shared in a history classroom. However, while the work done by Washington was admirable (especially the literal creation of the Tuskegee Institute), I find myself leaning with the position of Du Bois, Washington needed (and possibly had the social and political power to) take a stronger stand against the position of African Americans in American society.

This second ghost-written autobiography of Booker T. Washington presents the carefully crafted public persona that he wanted. Beneath the mask of a humble, saintly,acetic and patient Negro is a power-hungry, self-aggrandizing man. Washington played his cards close to the vest and was sure that he never offended white people from the North or the South. He curried favor with captains of industry such as Andrew Carnegie and Roger Baldwin who eventually set him up for life. Nevertheless, Washington created an enduring black institution that still exists--Tuskegee University; he also created an ideology of self-help that was adopted by both Marcus Garvey and Elijah Muhammad.When Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote the poem, "We Wear the Mask", he must have had Washington in mind because to this day no one knows who the real Booker T. Washington was: clever manipulator, servile Uncle Tom, or "Wizard of Tuskegee." Even Ralph Ellsion alludes to Washington and Tuskegee in his magnum opus, "Invisible Man." Love him or loathe him, Booker T. Washington was one of the most important African Americans of the 20th Century. And his autobiography is must reading. One should read DuBois's "The Souls of Black Folk" for contrast.