1118 Washington, Booker T.
of success when he could sit in a school classroom
and learn, or when he could have all the ginger
cookies he wanted. In Malden, West Virginia, he
could not imagine himself being more successful
than if he were like the black boy from Ohio who
could read, and who read the newspapers to the
entire town every night. Washington had by this
time experienced but not succumbed to extreme
poverty as well as constant, difficult, and dangerous
work, but it was not until he left Malden for Hamp-
ton Normal and Industrial Institute in Virginia that
he learned that he could be despised and hated,
judged and branded as inferior, by total strangers,
because of his skin color alone.
When the founders of Tuskegee Normal and
Industrial Institute asked Samuel Armstrong, the
founder and president of Hampton Institute, to send
them a man to head the new school in Alabama,
they meant a white man; no African American had
ever been given such authority. Armstrong recom-
mended Washington, who knew that the world
expected him to fail at his mission just because he
was a black man. However, he never allowed himself
to become discouraged by such psychological and
sociological obstacles, just as he never allowed him-
self to become discouraged by the constant stress of
running and raising money for Tuskegee. He always
expected to succeed, because expecting to succeed is
in itself a requirement for success.
In his autobiography, Washington notes that the
most successful people in life are those who com-
pletely throw themselves into their work, forgetting
about themselves entirely. He consciously imitated
Armstrong in working tirelessly for the success of
Negro education in the South. He turned down
the chance to enter politics because he thought this
would be more selfish and egotistical than to work
directly with, for, and among the people who needed
him most.
Washington also believed that success built on
a solid foundation of hard work was always more
stable. Having to work hard for an education made
it more valuable, and therefore he never allowed
students to simply pay their way through Tuskegee.
All students, regardless of ability to pay, had to work
for the school at some task or industry to earn their
keep, despite parents’ protests that they wanted their
children to study and not to work. By overcoming
their reluctance to labor with their hands, which had
been seen as something only slaves did, the students
were preparing to succeed under any circumstances.
To Washington, success was never a matter of
luck but always the reward of hard work, persistence,
and abiding by one’s principles. He was a success-
ful fund-raiser because he considered it his duty
to spread the good news of Tuskegee’s success to
anyone who might contribute to its support, but he
never interpreted a refusal to donate as a reflection
of someone’s character. He refused to ever be dis-
couraged because he worked not for himself but for
a higher good, and this is what he wanted his own
race to learn: The message in Up from Slavery is that
you can and will succeed if you are willing to work
your way up the ladder. Washington encourages his
white readers to have sympathy and great hope that
the descendants of the millions of black slaves who
found themselves free, uneducated, penniless, land-
less, despised, and hated in 1865 would soon become
completely integrated into the economic life of the
country, to the benefit of those for whom they would
work, the industrial capitalists.
Barbara Z. ThadenWork in Up from Slavery
Washington’s earliest memories include the work
he is required to do as a slave child on the planta-
tion, from sweeping the yard to taking the corn to
be ground at the mill. Work on the plantation is
constant but not very efficient. Slave owners had
come to believe that physical labor is beneath their
dignity, and subsequently they do nothing and know
nothing about repairing a broken fence, cleaning a
room, or fixing a ripped dress, while the slaves do
not know and do not care how to work efficiently
and effectively because they have not been trained.
When he first moves to West Virginia, Wash-
ington, though still only a boy of about 11, works
full-time in a salt mine and then in a coal mine. The
wages are so low, the work so filthy and dangerous,
and the family living conditions so unsanitary that
Washington wonders if African Americans are truly
better off being free. However, he begins to learn a
series of lessons about work that profoundly shapes
his life and philosophy of life. The first he learns at