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Up from Slavery
Booker T. Washington (1901)
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON’s autobiography, Up from
Slavery, records one of the most remarkable suc-
cess stories in American literature and history. At
the beginning of the 20th century, Washington’s
ascendance to power, as W. E. B. DUBOIS noted in
The SOULS OF BLACK FOLK (1903), was “easily the
most striking thing in the history of the Ameri-
can Negro since 1876” (240). Although Washing-
ton had achieved relative success as the founder of
Tuskegee Normal School in Alabama in 1881, he
did not gain national fame until 1895 when he de-
livered his now-infamous “Atlanta Exposition Ad-
dress” to a mixed audience of blacks and southern
and northern whites attending the opening of the
1895 Atlanta Exposition in Georgia. Washington’s
national fame and prominence were enhanced by
the publication of Up from Slavery (1901), which
grew out of a serialized narrative of his life pub-
lished in The Outlook, a popular magazine.
Washington had published an earlier autobi-
ography, The Story of My Life and Work (1900),
which, although it had sold well, was generally
criticized in some quarters as being incomplete.
His supporters and friends suggested he write a
new autobiography—one that would portray him
more successfully and provide greater insights into
his philosophy and goals. Washington hired Max
Bennett Thrasher, a white New Englander with

outstanding journalistic talent, for the project. He

also received advice on the most effective way to

organize the new project from his friend Lyman

Abbott, the editor of The Outlook. The result was

the widely read best-selling autobiography Up

from Slavery, which was considered extraordinary.

It had a major impact on MARCUS GARVEY, the Ja-

maican founder and leader of the Universal Negro

Improvement Association (UNIA), who was liv-

ing in London when he read it. Garvey came to

America to discuss his own economic and politi-

cal plans with Washington. After reading the au-

tobiography some readers were so impressed with

Washington that they donated money for his work

at Tuskegee.

In the opening chapters of Up from Slavery,

Washington revisits his boyhood in slavery in

Franklin County, Virginia; discusses his recollec-

tions of his family; and records his life following

emancipation. Although Washington’s account

of slavery coincides, for the most part, with those

of other former slaves, such as FREDERICK DOUG-

LASS, his personal life was far better than that of

most. Besides the wooden shoes he was given to

wear, the “most trying ordeal” he “was forced to

endure as a slave boy... was the wearing of a flax

shirt” (34). In Up from Slavery, Washington’s rec-

ord of the slave/master relationship contradicts

those of other major slave narrators, for, according

to Washington, the detrimental aspects of slavery