Nonfiction · 1901
Up from Slavery
An Autobiography
Booker T. Washington’s account of his own rise is also a brief for a programme: that the surest route out of the conditions slavery left behind is property, trade and skilled work — a brick made well, a field kept clean, a debt paid — and that recognition follows the work rather than precedes it.
Published in 1901, the book is calm to the point of self-effacement, and the calm is deliberate: it was written for white readers as much as for Black ones. That is what made it the most widely read Black autobiography of its time, and what made it contested from the moment it appeared — most sharply by W. E. B. Du Bois, who read the Atlanta address of 1895 as a bargain that gave away too much.
The volume prints Washington’s preface, the introduction to the first edition and all seventeen chapters.
Contents
- Epigraph
- Preface
- Introduction
- Chapter I — A Slave Among Slaves
- Chapter II — Boyhood Days
- Chapter III — The Struggle for an Education
- Chapter IV — Helping Others
- Chapter V — The Reconstruction Period
- Chapter VI — Black Race and Red Race
- Chapter VII — Early Days at Tuskegee
- Chapter VIII — Teaching School in a Stable and a Hen-House
- Chapter IX — Anxious Days and Sleepless Nights
- Chapter X — A Harder Task Than Making Bricks Without Straw
- Chapter XI — Making Their Beds Before They Could Lie on Them
- Chapter XII — Raising Money
- Chapter XIII — Two Thousand Miles for a Five-Minute Speech
- Chapter XIV — The Atlanta Exposition Address
- Chapter XV — The Secret of Success in Public Speaking
- Chapter XVI — Europe
- Chapter XVII — Last Words
Print editions
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Portable editionPerfect-bound with a matte black or machine-red laminated cover on cream, acid-free paper. Light in the hand and made to be read.
Perfect binding · Cream 60# uncoated paper · Matte laminated cover · 168 pages
$16.95
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Subjects
About this edition
The text is free of copyright. This edition was prepared from an authoritative digitisation, processed by Bibliomancer and held to human review; every automated correction is recorded in its transformation log. Rights assessed for CA, EU, GB, US.
Part of American Literature.
Source mind
About the author
1856–1915 · Victorian
A Bibliomancer biography of Booker T. Washington is in preparation. See all their books.
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