Up from Slavery: An Autobiography
By Washington, Booker T.
Classic work by Washington, Booker T..
Table of Contents
UP FROM SLAVERY: Preface This volume is the outgrowth of a series of articles, dealing with incidents in my life, which were published consecutively in the Outlook. While they we...
knottiest problem we have ever faced. It not only makes “a carpenter of a man; it makes a man of a carpenter.” In one sense, therefore, it is of greater value than any other instit...
A Slave Among Slaves I was born a slave on a plantation in Franklin County, Virginia. I am not quite sure of the exact place or exact date of my birth, but at any rate I suspect I...
Boyhood Days After the coming of freedom there were two points upon which practically all the people on our place were agreed, and I found that this was generally true throughout ...
The Struggle For An Education One day, while at work in the coal-mine, I happened to overhear two miners talking about a great school for coloured people somewhere in Virginia. Th...
Helping Others At the end of my first year at Hampton I was confronted with another difficulty. Most of the students went home to spend their vacation. I had no money with which t...
The Reconstruction Period The years from 1867 to 1878 I think may be called the period of Reconstruction. This included the time that I spent as a student at Hampton and as a teac...
Black Race And Red Race During the year that I spent in Washington, and for some little time before this, there had been considerable agitation in the state of West Virginia over ...
Early Days At Tuskegee During the time that I had charge of the Indians and the night-school at Hampton, I pursued some studies myself, under the direction of the instructors ther...
Teaching School In A Stable And A Hen-House I confess that what I saw during my month of travel and investigation left me with a very heavy heart. The work to be done in order to ...
Anxious Days And Sleepless Nights The coming of Christmas, that first year of our residence in Alabama, gave us an opportunity to get a farther insight into the real life of the p...
A Harder Task Than Making Bricks Without Straw From the very beginning, at Tuskegee, I was determined to have the students do not only the agricultural and domestic work, but to h...
Making Their Beds Before They Could Lie On Them A little later in the history of the school we had a visit from General J.F.B. Marshall, the Treasurer of the Hampton Institute, wh...
Raising Money When we opened our boarding department, we provided rooms in the attic of Porter Hall, our first building, for a number of girls. But the number of students, of both...
Two Thousand Miles For A Five-Minute Speech Soon after the opening of our boarding department, quite a number of students who evidently were worthy, but who were so poor that they...
The Atlanta Exposition Address The Atlanta Exposition, at which I had been asked to make an address as a representative of the Negro race, as stated in the last chapter, was opene...
The Secret Of Success In Public Speaking As to how my address at Atlanta was received by the audience in the Exposition building, I think I prefer to let Mr. James Creelman, the n...
Europe In 1893 I was married to Miss Margaret James Murray, a native of Mississippi, and a graduate of Fisk University, in Nashville, Tenn., who had come to Tuskegee as a teacher ...
Last Words Before going to Europe some events came into my life which were great surprises to me. In fact, my whole life has largely been one of surprises. I believe that any man’...