1116 Washington, Booker T.
it is all she is good for. The suffering woman is thus
dehumanized; indeed, she pretends to be a piece of
wood in order to cope with all of the bodily pain
inflicted by her husband.
Although black women often fall victim to the
brutality of black men, one thing that unites black
men and women alike is racially motivated violence
from the white characters in The Color Purple. Nev-
ertheless, it is the female Sofia who is the primary
target of this type of prejudice and aggression. After
she meets the mayor and his wife in the street, the
white woman patronizingly asks Sofia to be her
maid. When Sofia replies with the words “Hell no,”
the mayor slaps her, and she retaliates by knocking
him to the floor. This acts as a catalyst for further
violence, which leaves Sofia blind in one eye and
with cracked ribs, a fractured skull, a torn nose, and
bruises covering her face and body. Moreover, this
mutilated woman is then sentenced to jail for 12
years before being released for good behavior and
put to work as a servant for the mayor and his family.
Violence permeates this text at every level. The
Color Purple is dominated by bloodshed that comes
from racially motivated white cruelty and from
within the black community itself. It shapes the
characters and controls the narrative, emphasizing
both the mental and the physical pain that seem to
lie at the very heart of the Deep South.
Jessica Webb
waSHiNGToN, bookEr T. Up from
Slavery (1901)
The autobiography of the most influential black
man in the United States from the late 19th cen-
tury until his death, Up from Slavery was written to
show that a determined individual, although born
a slave, could achieve almost anything. As a slave
child, and then as a free one, Booker T. Washing-
ton (1856–1915) knew only work. Eventually his
strong desire to obtain an education led him on
a pilgrimage to Hampton Institute, a college for
the education of freed slaves. Above and beyond
book learning, students at Hampton had to learn a
trade and work with their hands. Washington would
adopt and expand on this model of education when
he helped to found a school for African Americans,
the Tuskegee Institute in the Deep South, becoming
its first head. Southern whites did not want former
slaves to be educated because they feared losing the
cheap labor their farms and plantations depended
on. African Americans themselves saw education as
a way of escaping a life of hard physical labor. But
Washington emphasized to blacks and whites alike
that Tuskegee would not educate the Negro off the
farm. On the contrary, he would learn the newest
scientific advances in farming, the industries, and
homemaking; then return to his home town, share
his knowledge, and enrich white and black alike.
Washington believed that industry, property, and
wealth were the way to acceptance in the South.
Barbara Z. ThadeneducatIon in Up from Slavery
Since the founding of the United States, education
has been seen as one route to a more prosperous
lifestyle, regardless of one’s religion, social class,
or national origin, with a few exceptions. One of the
most egregious of these was that it was wrong to
teach a slave how to read and write.
Even as a slave child, Washington dreamed of
being allowed into the schoolroom with his mas-
ter’s children. He had always had an overwhelm-
ing desire to learn how to read. In Malden, West
Virginia, after the Civil War, he initially could not
find anyone to teach him the alphabet. Finally, a day
school for children was opened, and Washington
attended between shifts working in the coal mine;
he could not have been more than 10 or 11 years old
at the time. One day, he heard about a new board-
ing school for black people in southeastern Virginia,
called Hampton Normal and Agricultural Insti-
tute (now Hampton University). He immediately
resolved to go there, although he had no idea what
kind of students it took, where it was, how much it
would cost to attend, and how much it would cost
to get there.
Having underestimated both the distance and
the money needed to get to Hampton, Washington
spent many days sleeping under bridges and in the
woods, with little to eat. He arrived at Hamp-
ton so dirty, so penniless, and so young that the
head teacher ignored him. Finally, however, he was
allowed to prove his merit by sweeping a lecture