Some Notes from Booker T. Washington's classic "Up from Slavery"

• I found this volume on Ivy's shelf: it was bound in duct tape, which always attracts my attention: if it's in that condition, it must be important!

• It is a compilation of articles that BTW wrote for "Outlook" magazine.

• BTW's birthdate is uncertain -- 1858 or 1859, he thinks -- but it's certain that he was born a slave, and lived on the dirt floor of a plantation's outdoor kitchen. Children in Haiti may find themselves living similarly. "...in the midst of the most miserable, desolate, and discouraging surroundings." (p. 1)

• "One of my earliest recollections is that of my mother cooking a chicken late at night, and awakening her children for the purpose of feeding them. How or where she got it I do not know. I presume, however, it was procured from our owner's farm. Some people may call that theft. If such a thing was to happen now, I should condemn it as theft myself. But taking place at the time it did, and for the reason that it did, no one could ever make me believe that my mother was guilty of thieving. She was simply a victim of the system of slavery." (p. 5) [as was his white father, he says, whom he never knew].

• "...I have never been able to understand how the slaves throughout the South, completely ignorant as were the masses so far as books or newspapers were concerned, were able to keep themselves so accurately and completely informed about the great National questions that were agitating the country." (p. 7)

• Paul Farmer says that the same is true of the illiterate in the interior of Haiti: they know quite well what's going on. "Pale franse pa di lespri" (Speaking French doesn't mean you're smart) -- and neither does literacy mean that you're smart. People have been smart -- and aware -- long before writing, and reading....

• Why were the slaves in some sense better off than the whites when freedom came? (p. 18) Because they had skills! They were blacksmiths, wheelwrights; they'd actually bent their backs over crops in fields, and knew how to grow their own food.

• After the war, Booker moved to the Kanawha valley of W. Virginia. (Malden) p. 24, 26

• First book: Webster's "blue-book" spelling book (p. 27)

• A quote that addresses the illiteracy of the previous page: "Though [my mother] was totally ignorant, so far as mere book knowledge was concerned, she had high ambitions for her children, and a large fund of good, hard, common sense which seemed to enable her to meet and master every situation. If I have done anything in life worth attention, I feel sure that I inherited the disposition from my mother. [An illiterate woman!] (p. 28 -- my emphasis throughout).

• "Few people who were not right in the midst of the scenes can form any exact idea of the intense desire which the people of my race showed for an education....The great ambition of the older people was to try to learn to read the Bible before they died." (p. 29-30)

• "I have great faith in the power and influence of facts. It is seldom that anything is permanently gained by holding back a fact." (p. 32) [in which he confesses to pushing up the clock in the salt works from 8:30 to 9:00 every day.]

• The lesson of the cap: "...that my mother had strength of character enough not to be led into temptation of seeming to be that which she was not -- of trying to impress my schoolmates and others that she was able to buy me a 'store hat' when she was not....[S]he refused to go into debt for that which she did not have the money to pay for." (p. 33)

• "...I resolved that because I had no ancestry myself I would leave a record of which my children would be proud." (p. 35)

• "When a white boy undertakes a task, it is taken for granted that he will succeed. On the other hand, people are usually surprised if the Negro boy does not fail. In a word, the Negro youth starts out with the presumption against him." (p. 36) [And it's still so true today!]

• "...[S]uccess is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed." (p. 39)

• "With few exceptions the Negro youth must work harder and must perform his tasks even better than a white youth in order to secure recognition." (p. 40)

• "...the great human law, which is universal and eternal, that merit, no matter under what skin found, is, in the long run, recognized and rewareded." (p. 41) [Still true today!]

• Booker [Taliaferro] [Washington] (p. 34) -- B's mother gave at birth -- Booker gave himself -- but Booker didn't know!
• Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, VA
• Mrs. Viola Ruffner

References:

• MY LARGER EDUCATION, Being Chapters from My Experience: Booker T. Washington, 1856-1915.