Up From Slavery Booker T Washington Analysis

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In 1901, Booker T. Washington published his autobiography “Up from Slavery”, providing a powerful and compelling voice for the newly free African-Americans, a plea for equality in a quickly changing America. In his memoirs, Washington evokes his address at the Atlanta Exposition where he asks everyone to “cast down your bucket where you are”, meaning that all Americans, whatever their skin color, should take advantage of what is good and valuable around them, be aware of the possibilities and sources available to them, and learn to live with what they have, and who they are, not wait for help or outside supplies, which is exactly that he does in his own narrative. Starting his personal story, Booker T. Washington explains how he took advantage
Washington is aware of the possibilities and sources available to him and his people, starting very early in life as he recalls his mother cooking a chicken late at night, not blaming her for trying to provide for her children but using the context to express the necessity of survival of the time as “taking place at the time it did, and for the reason that it did, no one could ever make me believe that my mother was guilty of thieving. She was simply a victim of the system of slavery.” He also remembers how “completely ignorant” slaves were not able to read but were very informed about everything thanks to “the “grape-vine” telegraph” or how he himself, while helping at the master’s table, would “absorbed a good deal of” the discussion and learn from it. He has an optimistic view of the world and whilst condemning “slavery (…) as an institution”, he believes it made African-Americans who “went through (its) school (…) stronger and (in a) more hopeful condition, materially, intellectually, morally, and religiously”. He insists on the fact that “the slave system (…) took the spirit of self-reliance and self-help out of the white people.” As a matter of fact, he adds that “the slaves were almost as well fitted to begin life anew as the master, except in the matter of book-learning and ownership of property.” In the same spirit, he helps the students at Tuskegee help themselves as he provides them with an intellectual
Washington explains how he and his people learned to live with what they have, and who they are, how they did not wait for help or outside supplies, like during the war,” the slaves felt the deprivation less than the whites” because they were accustomed to eat what was available around them. The author explains that “the slaves (…) had mastered some handicraft, and none were ashamed (…) to labour.” The author wants all people to help one another, to look for what can be useful for our common society, to “cement the friendship of the races and bring about hearty cooperation between them”. He wants African-Americans to “(make) friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded”, to be proud to be able to make a living by “the productions of our hands”, to not be ashamed to work hard and “dignify and glorify common labour”, to learn that manual labor is as valuable as the intellectual one because “ there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.” His lesson is also addressed to the white people who have to realize that the African-American population has been part of the American experience from the start and it is a great treasure to have to help prolong the “mutual progress” of the common future. He does not hide the importance of cooperation and interconnection that must exist from both sides because “there is no defence or security for any of us except in the highest intelligence and development of

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