Book summary - Up From Slavery The book, Up From Slavery, written by Booker Taliaferro Washington, profoundly touched me when I read it. Washington accomplished many amazingobstacles throughout his life. He became perhaps the most prominent blackleader of his time. Blacks could gain equality by improving their economicsituation through education rather than by demanding equal rights that wastermed the Atlanta Compromise. Washington’s life story was told during the mid to late 1800’s into the early1900’s, in the time when the Emancipation Proclamation had gone into effect. The Emancipation Proclamation was one major event in history that foreverchanged our country. All slaves were free and had to go find a new place to liveand a new place to work. When the slaves were first freed there was alot ofhostile feelings from the whites towards the newly freed slaves. To blacks livingwithin post- Reconstruction South, Washington offered industrial education asthe means of escape from sharecropping and allowed blacks to becomeself-employed, while owning their own land, or small business. Booker over came the obstacles of the free black man by educatinghimself and other blacks to become “equal” to whites. Until the start of WorldWar I African Americans had a difficult time. His speaking tours and privatepersuasion tried to equalize public educational opportunities and to reduce racialviolence. There were many gains earned after the Civil War seemed lost by thetime of World War I because racial violence and lynching reached an all timehigh. However, both the National Association for the Advancement of ColoredPeople (NAACP) and the National Urban League (NUL) were founded by blacksand whites during this time. Both of these major civil rights organizations makeefforts on the part of blacks and their white allies to insure that the United Statesprovides "freedom and justice to all". The year of Washington's...
