Review: Uplifting as Ever
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 09 26, 2013
UFS was one of the first autobiographies I can ever remember reading. That was high school, c 1969-1970. I loved the book then and I loved it when I read it again recently, oddly for the same reasons, despite how I've changed in all those decades. It's an uplifting book written in a plain but profound voice about the life and work of an amazing and unforgettable man.Booker T. Washington was born a slave c 1858-1859 (he was unsure himself of the date). He never knew his father, and his mother and every black person in his social circle were illiterate. He grew up in grinding poverty and ignorance, despite emancipation as a child, yet by sheer will, love of learning, singular focus, and Providence he obtained an education and then set his life's goal to help other freed slaves become educated as well. He founded the Tuskegee Normal School in Nashville, now known as Tuskegee University, to send teachers into the Southern countryside to lift up other poor freedmen. The world has been enriched by the contributions of its graduates ever since.His education style was unique: Washington believed in the value and dignity of labor during a time when blacks sought book learning above all else, when, because of slavery, labor was seen as "degrading" and "inferior"--a problem during Reconstruction that plagued whites as well as blacks. He spends much time in his story explaining why he insisted that all Tuskegee students learn to work with their hands as well as their minds.But that's all history. The real draw of the book is Washington's candid and inspiring assessment of the South during Reconstruction and his burning passion to integrate his race into the stream of business, arts, sciences, religion, and cultured living.