Book Review Louis Harlans edited edition of Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington essays

Book Review Louis Harlan's edited edition of Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington essays Booker T. Washington's body of work, study, and his life as a whole, as most notably encompassed within the text his own autobiography, entitled, Up From Slavery, is often set against the live of W.E.B. Du Bois. As noted by the scholar Louis T. Harlan, conventional wisdom holds that Booker T. Washington advocated a fairly conservative point of view, regarding the place of African-Americans in American society, in contrast to Du Bois's advocacy of immediate political as well as economic equality for the races of America. Booker T. Washington's ethos of putting down one's bucket' where one stood, as an African American, is seen as fundamentally conciliatory to white society, rather than offering a potentially liberating point of view to America's community of oppressed African Americans. Blacks under the tyranny of Jim Crow's de facto segregation, or even the de jure educational and economic segregation of the North, were hungry not simply for economic advancement, but for political and spiritual justice. By over-focusing on economics, as opposed to integrated education and justice and intellectual advancement, Washington is said to have sold himself short, as well as his people. (Historians in their understanding of Washington's life quite deliberately However, Washington was a far more complex individual than this initial gloss might allow. Louis Harlan's introduction to Washington's life is particular important not simply because Harlan offers a comprehensive reading of an important figure in American history and African American history. Harlan is the author of a biography of Washington, and his reading of Washington's life is important for the redemptive reading he offers of a figure so frequently misread by history and even by African Americans today, intent upon finding a scapegoat for the lack of advancement for individuals within the community during the f...