Up from Slavery 1117hall. All students at Hampton were expected to do
manual labor to earn part of their room and board,
and thanks to his former employer Mrs. Ruffner,
Washington knew how to clean a room. He was
admitted and hired as a janitor.
At Hampton Institute, Washington studied the
subjects that future schoolteachers, ministers, and
educated businessmen would need to know, but
he felt that the most important things he learned
were how to live and conduct himself so that there
was no trace of the former slave on him, despite his
continued poverty. He learned how to sleep between
two sheets, brush his teeth, bathe daily, set a table,
and eat at a table, as well as how to speak to great
men. Slaves had often been forced to live like barn-
yard animals, but Hampton students were taught to
behave like ladies and gentlemen.
The most important lesson Washington learned
was the value and dignity of work. He was amazed
to see men and women, especially white women who
were wealthy and came from illustrious families,
washing windows, cleaning and polishing furniture,
and otherwise preparing the school for opening day.
These people took pride in their work and did not
think manual labor was beneath their dignity or
position.
When Washington was called to head the newly
established Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Insti-
tute, he knew his first task would be to convince his
people that an education was not a ticket into a life
of wealth and ease, nor even an escape from manual
labor. Instead of thinking that manual labor was
something to be avoided at all costs, they were to
learn how to labor more efficiently and intelligently,
using the best and newest methods of agriculture,
homemaking, and animal husbandry; to take pride
in their work; and to profit by it financially and
spiritually.
Washington felt that Latin, Greek, and higher
mathematics were not proper subjects of study
because agriculture was the main industry in the
South. The students, even those who were already
schoolteachers, would have to do manual labor and
learn a trade while at Tuskegee so that they could
understand the pride and dignity of labor. Many also
had to learn how to bathe daily, brush their teeth,
keep their clothes clean, sleep between sheets, and
eat at regular times. At Tuskegee, owning a tooth-
brush was more important than owning a textbook.
When students graduated from Tuskegee, they
were to return to their hometowns and share their
knowledge of best practices in farming, household
chores, breeding livestock, and taking care of the
body. Therefore, Hampton and Tuskegee were called
agricultural and technical institutes, as opposed to
colleges or universities, where one would study for
the law, medicine, or liberal arts, but not learn a
trade. Tuskegee Institute was built from the ground
up by its students, who in the process learned to
make bricks and furniture, cook, raise crops, and
breed animals. They also experimented with new
tools and methods of farming—anything that was
sure to be of immediate usefulness to people of both
races all over the South.
Barbara Z. ThadenSucceSS in Up from Slavery
Booker T. Washington realized that his was one of
the most remarkable success stories in American
history, and he stresses in his autobiography that
success is possible for anyone with talent, perse-
verance, and single-mindedness of purpose. The
American dream of rags to riches was attainable,
even by a former slave who began with nothing,
despite the obvious racial prejudice prevalent at the
time. Washington’s primary purpose in writing this
autobiography was to raise money for the Tuskegee
Institute, his school in Alabama, so in it he purpose-
fully understates white prejudice, lawlessness, and
violence against blacks in order to win over his
wealthy white readers.
To show how unlikely it was that he would
one day be the most influential black leader in the
United States, Washington describes his child-
hood in slavery as miserable, desolate, and hope-
less. However, he then claims that slavery was a
“school” that taught his race how to work, to exist
with few resources, and to persevere despite unend-
ing obstacles. Slavery had not “ruined” the race by
centuries of violently enforced dependency; instead,
it had prepared them to succeed in the climate of
free capitalism.
Washington shows that success is relative. As a
slave child, he believed he would be at the pinnacle