Booker T Washington’s Up From Slavery

Booker Taliaferro Washington was born on April 5, 1856. He was an African-American educator, author, and advisor to Republican presidents. He was a dominant leader in the African-American community in the United States from 1890 to 1915. Representative of the last generation of black American leaders born in slavery, he spoke on behalf of the large majority of blacks who lived in the South but had lost their ability to vote by the southern legislatures. While his opponents called, his powerful network of supporters the "Tuskegee Machine". He maintained control because of his ability to gain support of numerous groups including influential whites and the black business, as well as educational and religious communities nationwide. He advised on financial contributions from philanthropists, and evaded white Southerners with his help to the political realities of the age of Jim Crow segregation. The intended audience of the book is to help black people and other disadvantaged minorities learn useful, marketable skills and work to pull themselves, as a race, up by the bootstraps. Washington is trying to convey that although someone had a bad childhood or over came many hardships, they can rise up and become someone important in the world. The overall feel of the book was quite interesting because an influential black man did not write most works of that time. Throughout the entire book, you can feel from the tone that although he went through many hardships as a slave during the civil war, he still turned out to be someone who made a difference in the world.