Since the 1960s, Martin Luther King, Jr., has personified black leadership with his use of direct action protests against white authority. A century ago, in the era of Jim Crow, Booker T. Washington pursued a different strategy to lift his people. In this compelling biography, Norrell reveals how conditions in the segregated South led Washington to call for a less contentious path to freedom and equality. He urged black people to acquire economic independence and to develop the moral character that would ultimately gain them full citizenship. Although widely accepted as the most realistic way to integrate blacks into American life during his time, WashingtonÕs strategy has been disparaged since the 1960s. The first full-length biography of Booker T. in a generation, Up from History recreates the broad contexts in which Washington worked: He struggled against white bigots who hated his economic ambitions for blacks, African-American intellectuals like W. E. B. Du Bois who resented his huge influence, and such inconstant allies as Theodore Roosevelt. Norrell details the positive power of WashingtonÕs vision, one that invoked hope and optimism to overcome past exploitation and present discrimination. Indeed, his ideas have since inspired peoples across the Third World that there are many ways to struggle for equality and justice. Up from History reinstates this extraordinary historical figure to the pantheon of black leaders, illuminating not only his mission and achievement but also, poignantly, the man himself.

Learn how a slave became one of the leading influential African American intellectuals of the late 19th century. African American educator, author, speaker, and advisor to presidents of the United States, Booker Taliaferro Washington was the leading voice of former slaves and their descendants during the late 1800s. As part of the last generation of leaders born into slavery, Booker believed that blacks could better progress in society through education and entrepreneurship, rather than trying to directly challenge the Jim Crow segregation. After hearing the Emancipation Proclamation and realizing he was free, young Booker decided to make learning his life. He taught himself to read and write, pursued a formal education, and went on to found the Tuskegee Institute--a black school in Alabama--with the goal of building the community's economic strength and pride. The institute still exists and is home to famous alumnae like scientist George Washington Carver.

The Atlanta Compromise was an address by African-American leader Booker T. Washington on September 18, 1895. Given to a predominantly White audience at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia, the speech has been recognized as one of the most important and influential speeches in American history. The compromise was announced at the Atlanta Exposition Speech. The primary architect of the compromise, on behalf of the African-Americans, was Booker T. Washington, president of the Tuskegee Institute. Supporters of Washington and the Atlanta compromise were termed the "Tuskegee Machine." The agreement was never written down. Essential elements of the agreement were that blacks would not ask for the right to vote, they would not retaliate against racist behavior, they would tolerate segregation and discrimination, that they would receive free basic education, education would be limited to vocational or industrial training (for instance as teachers or nurses), liberal arts education would be prohibited (for instance, college education in the classics, humanities, art, or literature). After the turn of the 20th century, other black leaders, most notably W. E. B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter - (a group Du Bois would call The Talented Tenth), took issue with the compromise, instead believing that African-Americans should engage in a struggle for civil rights. W. E. B. Du Bois coined the term "Atlanta Compromise" to denote the agreement. The term "accommodationism" is also used to denote the essence of the Atlanta compromise. After Washington's death in 1915, supporters of the Atlanta compromise gradually shifted their support to civil rights activism, until the modern Civil rights movement commenced in the 1950s. Booker Taliaferro Washington (April 5, 1856 - November 14, 1915) was an African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor to presidents of the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African-American community. Washington was of the last generation of black American leaders born into slavery and became the leading voice of the former slaves and their descendants, who were newly oppressed by disfranchisement and the Jim Crow discriminatory laws enacted in the post-Reconstruction Southern states in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1895 his Atlanta compromise called for avoiding confrontation over segregation and instead putting more reliance on long-term educational and economic advancement in the black community.

Traces the life and achievements of the former slave who became the leading African-American educator of his time and the founder of Tuskegee University.

The My Itty-Bitty Bio series are biographies for the earliest readers. This book examines the life of Booker T. Washington in a simple, age-appropriate way that will help children develop word recognition and reading skills. Includes a timeline and other informative backmatter.

Booker dreamed of making friends with words, setting free the secrets that lived in books. Born into slavery, young Booker T. Washington could only dream of learning to read and write. After emancipation, Booker began a five-hundred-mile journey, mostly on foot, to Hampton Institute, taking his first of many steps towards a college degree. When he arrived, he had just fifty cents in his pocket and a dream about to come true. The young slave who once waited outside of the schoolhouse would one day become a legendary educator of freedmen. Award-winning artist Bryan Collier captures the hardship and the spirit of one of the most inspiring figures in American history, bringing to life Booker T. Washington's journey to learn, to read, and to realize a dream.

From the time of his famous Atlanta address in 1895 until his death in 1915, Booker T. Washington was the preeminent African-American educator and race leader. But to historians and biographers of the last hundred years, Washington has often been described as an enigma, a man who rose to prominence because he offered a compromise with the white South: he was willing to trade civil rights for economic and educational advancement. Thus one historian called Washington's time the "nadir of Negro life in America." Raymond W. Smock's interpretive biography explores Washington's rise from slavery to a position of power and influence that no black leader had ever before achieved in American history. He took his own personal quest for freedom and acceptance within a harsh, racist climate and turned it into a strategy that he believed would work for millions. Was he, as later critics would charge, an Uncle Tom and a lackey of powerful white politicians and industrialists? Sifting the evidence, Mr. Smock sees Washington as a field general in a war of racial survival, his compromise a practical attempt to solve an immense problem. He lived and worked in the midst of an undeclared race war, and his plan was to find a way to survive and to flourish despite the odds against him.

Reproduction of the original.

Scholars have sought to understand the mystique surrounding Booker T Washington. He is an enigma and continues to be lauded by those who offer him and his ideas as a model for Black Progress. This volume aims to provide the reader with a wide inter-disciplinary landscape with which to assess Washington.