4/8/08

I wanted to comment on Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery again. Throughout the whole book, Washington urges the African American community to see the immense value of labor and hard work. I found it obvious that one of his main goals in establishing the school at Tuskegee was to reverse the common idea that now that they were free, former slaves did not and should not have to work with their hands. He also wanted to instill the ideas of discipline, utility, respect, and selflessness for relationships between people. In reading this text, I thought that Booker T. Washington was being a little hypocritical when talking about the students going to classes and then having to labor in order to pay off their schooling. He criticized them for wanting to cut the work day short or somehow skipping out on doing the necessary work with their hands. However, when he was a child working in the salt mine, he turned the clock in the facility forward in order to get to school earlier and not miss class. This can be looked at two ways. First, he is consistent with his teachings that getting an education is the most important thing an African American could do to advance his position in society and the world. Washington as a young man was determined to get his education and was going to get his at pretty much any cost. On the other hand, Washington was causing the workers of the mine to work an hour or so less than they were supposed to during a normal work day. This goes against his ideas that hard labor is not a bad thing and that a person should not try to escape from doing his job. He would also condemn any student at Tuskegee Institute that would try to spend more time on his studies than was allotted during the day especially that student was using some of his designated work time to do so.