UP FROM SLAVERY

Up From slavery

Abstract

“Booker T. Washington was not an easy person to know. He never expressed himself frankly or clearly until he knew exactly to whom he was talking and just what their wishes and desires was”. W. E. B. Du Bois was perhaps Washington's most steadfast critic. That is certainly the view of most modern historians. In 1940, however, Du Bois tenor changed. Looking back in his first autobiography, he recalled that Washington was cryptic both in public and in private. Like Brer Rabbit, he was a trickster who navigated the precarious minefield of black and white in post-Reconstruction America. In this paper, we try to focus on Booker T. Washington.

Booker T. Washington, Up From slavery

Introduction

Paul Lawrence Dunbar, whom the principal of Tuskegee hailed as a “master” of “poetry and fiction,” probably had Washington in mind. Writing years later, Du Bois had the same revelation. Though he once disagreed with Washington, he came to realize that the man was nothing short of complex. In Booker T. Washington and Black Progress, a collection of essays that celebrates the centennial of the publication of Washington's second autobiography, contemporary scholars revisit this most enigmatic of historical personas, examining closely the mask (Strickland, 1973).

Discussion

Challenging the traditional view of Washington as an accommodationist, this collection shows that he was more multifaceted than most scholars have conceded. Louis R. Harlan, for example, argues that he was a master of the art of self representation. Aware of his divided public, Washington published two autobiographies, one intended for a black audience, the other written for whites. Focusing largely on his second account, Harlan demonstrates that Washington appropriated stories that were not his to embellish the story of his own life. Ever the statesman, he succeeded in inspiring white support and philanthropy (Friedman, 1974).

To that end, Harlan concludes that Up from Slavery was more a work of fiction than biography. Several of the essayists in this collection disagree, however. In Patrica A. Schechter's and David Leverenz's essays, gender assumes center stage. According to these authors, Washington challenged negative images of black women as loose and immoral by including images of black women to the contrary in Up from Slavery. At the center of his effort to portray black women as virtuous and deserving of respect lay his recollections of his mother and his wives. Leverenz takes that analysis a step further by considering Washington's first autobiography and how its portrayal of black womanhood differed from Up from Slavery.

Implicit in both of their analyses is a challenge to Harlan's claim. Most significant in this collection is Robert J. Norrell's essay, which places Washington's career as a race leader within the larger framework of the tumultuous times in which he worked. In Norrell's view, modern scholars have relied too heavily on the views of Washington's black critics in their reconstructions of the past. Missing is a discussion of his white critics. Often it was assumed that Washington had none, but Norrell demonstrates that not all whites agreed with ...