BrownGirl Speaks

Up From Slavery is Washington's autobiography chronicling his life from his childhood spent in slavery in Virginia to his being the famed orator and driving force of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Unsure of the year of his birth, Washington always had a strong desire to improve his life through education. He struggled to put himself through Hampton Institute where he cultivated a stern belief in hygiene, agriculture, and trade skills.   Booker T. Washington's brilliance is easily displayed in his idea that the institution of slavery harmed both slaves and slave owners' families. Labor was forced upon one group while the other had little to no training in trades altogether and that lack of self sufficiency became most evident during Reconstruction. This also fueled his desire to have the students of Tuskegee educated in agriculture and trades like brick making with as much emphasis as traditional school subjects. This was so much a focus that the first students, literally, helped to build the school brick by brick. This was also due to very little funding which eventually changed once much wealthier admirers took notice of Washington's work with southern Blacks. He was an unshaken, organized, and disciplined man who wholeheartedly believed in each person's need to be competent in some trade and be the best one could possibly at it. Today, as we try to climb out of this economic depression and see our fellow man and woman in dire need in Haiti, we can still take heed to his words of wisdom delivered in his famous Atlanta Exposition Address: Cast down your buckets where you are. Do what you can- with full effort - with what and who you have around you.

Challenges:
African Diaspora
Black Classics
POC Reading