“Up From Slavery,” is an autobiography of Booker T. Washington. In his autobiography, Booker T. Washington describes his personal experiences, difficulties, and the obstacles he faced throughout his lifetime. He overcame many difficult obstacles and persevered time and time again throughout his lifetime in order to achieve his goals. For example, he was very poor with almost no money at all when he began school at the Hampton Institute. By the time he graduated, Washington was offered administrative roles at the institute. He then went on to help establish schools, such as Tuskegee, for blacks and other minorities to learn the skills that they need in order to work and contribute to their world and be able to live in unison with the white people.
In Washington’s autobiography, one of the main themes of the book that stood out to me was perseverance. Washington’s entire life involves him having to persevere through difficult times in order to prove others wrong and achieve the success that he had. Although he was faced with so many difficult obstacles, he never gave up on getting an education. As a kid, he would go so far as to change the time on the clocks in the mines just to be able to get to school on time. He had a dream of getting an education from Hampton, and none of the many challenges and hardships that he went through could stop him from achieving that goal. When Tuskegee had no money for materials or land to build buildings, he did not let this discourage him. Instead, he tried to make his own bricks and failed over and over, but never gave up.
Washington essentially went from “rags” to “riches” during his lifetime. Washington himself came from “rags” as well as the Tuskegee Institute. With great perseverance and determination throughout his life and the founding and building of the Tuskegee Institute, he achieved success and was able to help others and lead others to success as well. He compared times from his early childhood or the early stages of the Tuskegee Institute to the successes that he eventually experienced. He used examples like these in order to show the amount of progress that can be made with hard work, no matter what obstacles and hardships you are faced with.
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Washington believes that there is dignity in labor. He believed slavery caused people to think of work as degrading. Slavery made blacks feel as though they were inferior because they were forced to do work. Washington learned that “it was not a disgrace to labour” (p.28) while he was at Hampton. The woman Principal at Hampton would help him wash windows and make beds. He admired her for that. When he started Tuskegee, he implemented that student would work to learn manual labor as well as their normal criteria.
Washington strongly believed in being self reliant, which is one of the main reasons that he wanted his students to learn manual labor. He also wanted his students to see that they can earn the respect of other people by the value of the work they do. He believed one key way to find success is to be the best at a particular skill. For example, if you are the best bricklayer in your area, you will be respected for it. This is how you become successful because when someone needs bricks to be laid, they are usually going to call someone who is respected and that they can trust to do an excellent job.
Another main theme that stood out to me in Washington’s life is self-reliance. He believes that regardless of your race or your background, being able to rely upon yourself and not others will lead to success. His strong belief in this trait may have started from an early age. When he was young, his mother made him a hat to wear to school instead of buying a new hat. She did this because she knew she could rely on herself to do it rather than having to buy a new hat. Due to his admiration of self-reliance, he not only requires his students at Tuskegee to learn a trade, but he also wants them to be able to plant and grow food for themselves. He grew up very poor with no money, so he hates wasteful spending. This is probably why he is so adamant about self-reliance.
