An important historical document
Review of Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington
In 8th grade, we spent a half year reading this memoir. There were many incidents that I remember vividly, such as the patchwork shirt that was painful to break in, but overall it bored me. On re-reading it 55 years later, I see it as an important statement and political manifesto for a certain kind of conservatism, one that led directly to Martin Luther King.
Taken one way, it is a kind of Horatio Alger tale, the slave boy making himself a success and gaining worldwide recognition for his hard work and “uplift of his race”. Of course, the story is true, and the energy it required was superhuman: there can be no doubt Booker T. Washington was a man of genius. Not only did he establish a learning institution that still exists, but he proved that African Americans can accomplish great things in the face of racism, backwardness, and poverty.
Beneath this narrative, he left a more complex legacy. While respectful in a historical sense, James Baldwin denounced what he saw as Washington’s real impulse: to make blacks presentable and useful to whites; that accepting your lot with patience and equanimity, then working hard would eventually improve the situation of the entire race; that turning the other cheek in the Christian tradition was more effective than anger or, indeed, determined political action. Washington’s basic message was conservative and cautious. By the 1950s, this logic had worn thin.
I can see how Baldwin would have come to this position. Ever the optimist and trusting in human nature, Washington appears obsequious and willing to overlook horrendous prejudice and degradation. Indeed, the period during which he rose coincided with the establishment of Jim Crow. Nonetheless, in my reading he shows flashes of acute awareness of these developments, choosing to advance his cause in silence rather than oppose them directly or wallow in bitterness. He keeps his connection to his origins and sees how far he came, how unlikely his success was, how much of a toll it took on him physically and mentally.
This is a great historical document.
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