Up From Slavery

“The hurtful influences of the institution were not by any means confined to the Negro.”

Washington argues that slavery was detrimental to both Black and white people in the South. He believed that white people were affected as well, since slavery prevented them from learning to work hard.

“From the time that I can remember having any thoughts about anything, I recall that I had an intense longing to learn to read.”

Washington is determined to get an education from the beginning of his life. He believes that reading will help open up the world to him. He begins his quest by learning to read numbers on equipment in the salt plant, and he is proud of his ability to recognize matching numbers even though he does not know what they mean.

“Every persecuted individual and race should get much consolation out of the great human law, which is universal and eternal, that merit, no matter what skill found, is, in the long run, recognized and rewarded.”

This phrase is repeated several times in the book and summarizes Washington’s overall educational philosophy. He believes that race becomes irrelevant once a person is good enough at something to be useful to society.

“The older I grow, the more I am convinced that there is no education which one can get from books and costly apparatus that is equal to that which can be gotten from contact with great men and women.”

Although he begins his educational career convinced that reading is the primary key to success, Washington slowly realizes that direct community building and learning from intelligent, successful people will take him far in life.

“At that institution I got my first taste of what it means to live a life of unselfishness, my first knowledge of the fact that the happiest individuals are those who do the most to make others useful and happy.”

Unselfishness is a major theme throughout the book. Washington believes that both personal success and an end to racial discrimination will be the result of hard, selfless work. 

“There are few places in the South now where public sentiment would permit such organizations to exist.”

Washington believes the Ku Klux Klan has been eliminated in the late 1800s and that social conditions have changed so that no such hateful organization would be tolerated any longer. The Klan was indeed in decline at this time, but it revived in 1915 and reached peak membership in the 1920s. Washington’s optimistic belief in racial progress would gain him many detractors in later years.

“How many times I wished then, and have often wished wince, that by some power of magic I might remove the great bulk of these people into the country districts and plant them upon the soil, upon the solid and never deceptive foundation of Mother Earth, where all nations and races that have ever succeeded have gotten their start, - a start that at first may be slow and toilsome, but one that nevertheless is real.”

Washington believes that the educated Black people of the North are not approaching the fight for civil rights in a practical way, and that real progress will only come very slowly. Since many of them have no experience in the poorest regions of the South, he believes that they cannot understand the real need for industrial education.

“The things they disliked most, I think, were to have their long hair cut, to give up wearing their blankets, and to cease smoking; but no white American ever thinks that any other race is wholly civilized until he wears the white man’s clothes, eats the white man’s food, speaks the white man’s language, and professes the white man’s religion.”

Written in reference to the Indigenous students Washington taught at Hampton, this passage encapsulates the attitude that Washington would be criticized for later: His goal is to equip people with the skills and habits that will allow them to be accepted in white-dominated society, not to ask whether that society’s expectations are just. 

“The work to be done in order to lift these people up seemed almost beyond accomplishing.”

Washington is discouraged when he first arrives in Alabama and finds people living in squalor. After a short time, though, he finds that most of them have an extreme motivation to learn, and many of the most successful students come from the most impoverished backgrounds. 

“The students who came first seemed to be fond of memorizing long and complicated ‘rules’ in grammar and mathematics, but had little thought or knowledge of applying these rules to the everyday affairs of their life.”

Washington begins to develop a disdain for academic learning during his early years in Tuskegee. He sees no point in learning complex, intellectual topics without first learning practical life skills. 

“I knew that if we failed it would injure the whole race.”

Washington feels immense pressure around the founding of the Tuskegee Institute. As director of one of the first schools of its kind, he knows that all eyes are on him and his colleagues. If anything goes wrong, it will cause many white people to assume that Black people are unable to educate themselves. 

“The actual sight of a first-class house that a Negro has built is ten times more potent than pages of discussion about a house that he ought to build, or perhaps could build.”

Washington believes that Black people need to directly prove their societal worth in order to be taken seriously. He implores the Tuskegee students to learn trades so they can show this worth in the most tangible way possible. 

“Had we started in a fine, attractive, convenient room, I feat we would have ‘lost our heads’ and become ‘stuck up.’”

Washington is proud that Tuskegee was built from nothing. He believes that people who achieve success without overcoming major struggles do not appreciate what they have and often feel that their success was inevitable. To Washington, this is a major personal flaw. He believes that all achievements should be the result of sacrifice and hard work. 

“I would permit no man, no matter what his color might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.”

Washington teaches himself to harbor no ill-will toward white people, even when he experiences direct discrimination. He believes that hatred can only make society worse, and that racist people are also victims of a society that was broken for many years. 

“I have found that strict business methods go a long way in securing the interest of rich people.”

Washington has immense respect for businesspeople, and he employs their own methods when asking for money. He refuses to label himself a “beggar” and sees every donation as a business transaction. 

“I have always had more of an ambition to do things than to talk about doing them.”

The public speaking career that Washington would become famous for was a role he took on reluctantly. Even after the Atlanta speech, he says he would much rather be in Tuskegee, teaching students and helping his cause directly. 

“I determined never to say anything in a public address in the North that I would not be willing to say in the South.”

Washington refuses to take part in what he sees as radical political agitation within the Northern civil rights movement. He has respect for Southern white people and believes that saying anything that will offend them will damage his cause in the long run. 

“I would say: ‘cast down your bucket where you are’ - cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded.”

This phrase comes from Washington’s Atlanta speech. It sums up the main message of the speech: that people should work closely with the people around them regardless of race. 

“The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing.”

Also from the Atlanta address, this phrase is one of the most controversial views that Washington ever shared. Northern civil rights activists saw this as a concession to white supremacy. 

“I think that the according of the full exercise of political rights is going to be a matter of natural, slow growth, not an over-night, gourd-vine affair.”

After the Atlanta speech, Washington stands by his sentiments. His political philosophy reflects his beliefs about education, that all progress must be gradual and natural, and that large social leaps will damage both society and individuals. This gradualism later became a major point of debate in the early civil rights movement. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail” to refute the argument that racial progress should be gradual. 

“In my efforts on the public platform I never have been able to understand why people come to hear me speak.”

Washington remains very humble throughout his life, recognizing that none of his achievements would have been possible without others’ help. He does not feel like a natural public speaker, and he believes that the sentiments he shares should be obvious to anyone who has observed the reality of American society. 

“I pity the man or woman who has never learned to enjoy nature and to get strength and inspiration out of it.”

Appreciation for the natural world is a running theme throughout the book. Washington gardens, raises animals, and often takes walks in the woods. He worries about people in cities who have no experience with the direct, unforgiving reality of nature. 

“I always envy the individual whose life-work is so laid that he can spend his evenings at home. I have sometimes thought that people who have this rare privilege do not appreciate it as they should.”

When he finds himself away from home for speaking tours, Washington often wishes he could be back at Tuskegee, working directly with students and spending time with his family. Although he lives an illustrious life of formal dinners and parties with powerful politicians, he appreciates any chance he gets to spend time with his wife and children.