This book, an important companion volume to Louis R. Harlan's prize-winning biography of Booker T. Washington, makes available for the first time in one collection Harlan's essays on the life and career of the celebrated black leader. Written over a span of a quarter of a century, they present a remarkably rich and complex look at Washington, the educator and leading precursor of the Civil Rights Movement who rose from slavery to be the dominant force in black America at the opening of the twentieth century. Harlan's mastery of biography is revealed in essays printed here exploring the nature of biographical writing. Readers interested in the art of historiography and biography will find here Harlan's essays detailing his experience in crafting his acclaimed biography of Washington, which received two Bancroft Awards, the Beveridge Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. Booker T. Washington in Perspective reveals Harlan as historian and biographer in the essays that were the prelude to his masterwork.
Since the 1960s, Martin Luther King, Jr., has personified black leadership with his use of direct action protests against white authority. A century ago, in the era of Jim Crow, Booker T. Washington pursued a different strategy to lift his people. In this compelling biography, Norrell reveals how conditions in the segregated South led Washington to call for a less contentious path to freedom and equality. He urged black people to acquire economic independence and to develop the moral character that would ultimately gain them full citizenship. Although widely accepted as the most realistic way to integrate blacks into American life during his time, WashingtonÕs strategy has been disparaged since the 1960s. The first full-length biography of Booker T. in a generation, Up from History recreates the broad contexts in which Washington worked: He struggled against white bigots who hated his economic ambitions for blacks, African-American intellectuals like W. E. B. Du Bois who resented his huge influence, and such inconstant allies as Theodore Roosevelt. Norrell details the positive power of WashingtonÕs vision, one that invoked hope and optimism to overcome past exploitation and present discrimination. Indeed, his ideas have since inspired peoples across the Third World that there are many ways to struggle for equality and justice. Up from History reinstates this extraordinary historical figure to the pantheon of black leaders, illuminating not only his mission and achievement but also, poignantly, the man himself.
The Atlanta Compromise was an address by African-American leader Booker T. Washington on September 18, 1895. Given to a predominantly White audience at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia, the speech has been recognized as one of the most important and influential speeches in American history. The compromise was announced at the Atlanta Exposition Speech. The primary architect of the compromise, on behalf of the African-Americans, was Booker T. Washington, president of the Tuskegee Institute. Supporters of Washington and the Atlanta compromise were termed the "Tuskegee Machine." The agreement was never written down. Essential elements of the agreement were that blacks would not ask for the right to vote, they would not retaliate against racist behavior, they would tolerate segregation and discrimination, that they would receive free basic education, education would be limited to vocational or industrial training (for instance as teachers or nurses), liberal arts education would be prohibited (for instance, college education in the classics, humanities, art, or literature). After the turn of the 20th century, other black leaders, most notably W. E. B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter - (a group Du Bois would call The Talented Tenth), took issue with the compromise, instead believing that African-Americans should engage in a struggle for civil rights. W. E. B. Du Bois coined the term "Atlanta Compromise" to denote the agreement. The term "accommodationism" is also used to denote the essence of the Atlanta compromise. After Washington's death in 1915, supporters of the Atlanta compromise gradually shifted their support to civil rights activism, until the modern Civil rights movement commenced in the 1950s. Booker Taliaferro Washington (April 5, 1856 - November 14, 1915) was an African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor to presidents of the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African-American community. Washington was of the last generation of black American leaders born into slavery and became the leading voice of the former slaves and their descendants, who were newly oppressed by disfranchisement and the Jim Crow discriminatory laws enacted in the post-Reconstruction Southern states in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1895 his Atlanta compromise called for avoiding confrontation over segregation and instead putting more reliance on long-term educational and economic advancement in the black community.
The University of Illinois Press offers online access to "The Booker T. Washington Papers," a 14-volume set published by the press. Users can search the papers, view images, and purchase the print version of the volumes. Booker Taliaferro Washington (1856-1915) was an African-American educator who was born a slave in Franklin County, Virginia.
First published in 2002. The Art of The Possible is a new study of the ideas and achievements of Booker T. Washington, the most influential African American leader of the period 1881-1915. Washington's program for racial uplift is assessed in the context of the key political, social and economic developments of his era, in a work which both incorporates original research and a systhesis of modern scholarship.
The memoirs and accounts of the Black educator are presented with letters, speeches, personal documents, and other writings reflecting his life and career.
Here in one omnibus edition are Booker T. Washington's most important books. Washington was constantly, and often bitterly, criticized by his contemporaries for being too conciliatory to whites and not concerned enough about civil rights. It would not be until after his death that the world would find out that he had indeed worked a great deal for civil rights anonymously behind the scenes. Up from Slavery is one of the most influential biographies ever written. On one level it is the life story of Booker T. Washington and his rise from slavery to accomplished educator and activist. On another level it the story of how an entire race strove to better itself. Washington makes it clear just how far race relations in America have come, and to some extent, just how much further they have to go. Written with wit and clarity. In My Larger Education, Booker T. Washington explains how he came by his positions on race relations, by describing the people who influenced him during the founding of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute of Alabama. In Character Building are thirty seven addresses that Booker T. Washington gave before students, faculty, and guests at the Tuskegee Institute. These addresses take the form of timeless advice on a number of subjects. Very motivational and uplifting. Here are six historic essays on the state of race relations during the Reconstruction and early twentieth century, written from the African American point of view. Included are "Industrial Education for the Negro" by Booker T. Washington, "The Talented Tenth" by W.E. Burghardt DuBois, "The Disfranchisement of the Negro" by Charles W. Chesnutt, "The Negro and the Law" by Wilford H. Smith, "The Characteristics of the Negro People" by H.T. Kealing, and "Representative American Negroes" by Paul Laurence Dunbar.
This volume turns from emphasizing Washington's institution-building (Tuskegee Institute) to examine those writings which reveal more about the black leader's growing role as a national public figure. Volume 5 covers a period during which Washington's fortunes continued to rise even as those of the black masses, for whom he claimed to speak, declined. Though forced to adhere narrowly to the racial philosophy he had espoused in the Atlanta Compromise address of 1895, Washington nonetheless was able to involve himself covertly in matters of civil rights and politics. He used the National Negro Business League as a front for political activity. He successfully lobbied against disenfranchisement of black voters in Georgia during November, 1899. During these years Washington began behind-the-scenes civil rights activities that foreshadowed a much more elaborate ''secret life'' after the turn of the century. He worked with lawyers of the Afro-American Council to test in the courts the grandfather clause of the Louisiana constitution of 1898, raising money to pay the legal costs and swearing the other participants to secrecy. T. Thomas Fortune, the leading black journalist of the day, was Washington's close personal advisor as he sought to spread his sphere of influence from his southern base to northern cities. Also included are writings on the first convention of the National Negro Business League, Washington's address before the Southern Industrial Convention in Huntsville, Ala., and the full text of Washington's first book, The Future of the American Negro, published in December, 1899. A fascinating view of Booker T. Washington and the milieu in which he operated, Volume 5 provides further reason to call the project, as C. Vann Woodward has done, ''the single most important research enterprise now under way in the field of American black history.''''The Washington Papers continue to provide a rich load of material for social historians. Intelligently and imaginatively edited, they illuminate not only the life of Booker T. Washington but the several worlds in which he lived.''--Allan H. Spear, Journal of American History On the subject of Washington ''There is no better source to consult than Louis R. Harlan's biography and the first . . . volumes of the Washington papers.''--New York Review of Books ''A major enterprise in Black historiography.''--Times Literary Supplement
