candidly explains, “the thing that was uppermost
in my mind was the desire to say something that
would cement the friendship of the races” (146). As
a result, he urged the cultivation of a new friend-
ship between blacks and southern white leaders.
The basis for such a relationship was black accom-
modation and acceptance of white dominance,
including the separation of the races. Washington
declared, “In all things that are purely social we can
be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hands in
all things essential to mutual progress” (148).
In addition to embracing segregation, which
would be legalized by the Supreme Court in its
Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896, Washington
encouraged both black and white southerners to
“cast down their buckets” where they were to es-
tablish and cement a complementary and expedi-
ent relationship. He reminded blacks that “it is in
the South that the Negro is given a man’s chance
in the commercial world” (147). He reminded
whites that blacks not only had remained faithful
to them but also had “without strikes and labour
wars, tilled your fields, clear your forests, builded
[sic] your railroads and cities, and brought forth
treasures from the bowels of the earth” (147).
According to HOUSTON BAKER, who compares
Washington’s rhetorical posture with that of min-
strel actors, Washington, in his “Atlanta Exposi-
tion Address,” emerges as an astute speaker and
politician who mastered the form of the minstrel’s
mask to accomplish his objective. Baker concludes,
“Washington’s work becomes a how to manual,
setting forth strategies of address (ways of talking
black and back) designed for Afro-American em-
powerment” (31).
Washington’s Up from Slavery continues to
be described as a rags-to-riches story, a particu-
lar American genre popularized by the stories of
Horatio Alger and Andrew Carnegie’s Gospel of
Wealth (1889). Its popularity is verified by efforts,
shortly before his death, to make a motion picture
based on the autobiography. Up from Slavery re-
mains a valuable source of information to scholars
interested in the life of this former slave and sig-
nificant 20th-century African-American leader. As
autobiography, it illustrates the skills employed by
Washington in handling specific areas of his expe-
rience and how this handling reflects his subjective
and personal intent.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baker, Houston A., Jr. Modernism and the Harlem Re-
naissance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1987.
DuBois, William E. B. The Souls of Black Folk. In
Three Negro Classics, 207–389. New York: Avon
Books, 1965.
Harlan, Louis R. Booker T. Washington: The Making
of a Black Leader, 1856–1901. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1972.
Harlan, Louis R. Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of
Tuskegee 1901–1915. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1983.
Washington, Booker T. Up from Slavery. Doubleday,
Page and Company, 1909. Reprinted in Three
Negro Classics, 23–205. New York: Avon Books,
1965.
Ronald. G. Coleman518 Up from Slavery