Reviews for Up from history : the life of Booker T. Washington
Choice
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
A quarter century ago, historians Louis R. Harlan and August Meier revised scholarly assessments of Booker T. Washington, unveiling the black educator's Machiavellian life--his backdoor campaigns to fight Jim Crow by financing civil rights cases, his secret political control of philanthropy aimed at black uplift, his surreptitious control of the black press, and his heavy-handed determination to crush opponents. All the while, Washington espoused an up-by-the-bootstraps accommodationist ideology during the age of segregation. Focusing on Washington's educational tours in Mississippi, Tennessee, North Carolina, Texas, and Florida, Jackson (Florida A&M Univ.) maintains that the black leader used these pilgrimages to celebrate African American progress and, especially, black manhood at a time when white supremacists and political demagogues defined people of color as "uncivilized," charging them with degenerating in the absence of slavery. While his chronological organization fosters unnecessary repetition, Jackson's state studies provide important local detail.Norrell's biography defends Washington from ongoing charges of the Tuskegee leader's alleged conservatism and "Uncle Tomism." Accusing Harlan and others of confusing Washington's "style with substance," Norrell (Univ. of Tennessee) celebrates Washington's "sophisticated mind," his leadership skills and accomplishments, his unwavering focus on African American progress, his efforts to raise black morale, and his "prophetic purpose." Norrell charges Washington's critics with understating the obstacles he confronted, his commitment to a protest agenda similar to that of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and his immense popularity with blacks. Unfortunately, Norrell overstates Harlan's criticisms of Washington to bolster his own revisionism. Despite weaknesses, these two books signal a welcome revival of interest in Washington, adding nuance, context, and argument based on a corpus of works published since the appearance of Harlan and Meier's pathbreaking work. They deserve wide readership and will stimulate debate. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Both books--all levels/libraries. J. D. Smith University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Library Journal
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
African American educator Booker T. Washington (1856-1915), who organized the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Tuskegee, AL, was a sought-after speaker, an adviser to several Presidents, and a voracious reader and writer. Born to an illiterate slave, he overcame the rampant racism of the time to become the "leader of his race," only to be vilified by history as being too accommodating to whites. Norrell (history, Univ. of Tennessee) has written a new examination of Washington's life, the title playing off of Washington's famous autobiography Up from Slavery. Just as Washington worked to escape the figurative and literal shackles of slavery, Norrell works to rescue Washington's life from latter-day depictions of him as an "Uncle Tom" who sought to mollify whites. Norrell argues that Washington's message (education, moral development, financial stability, racial consensus, patience, and optimism) has been unfairly dismissed, with his hard work to improve the lives of black Americans forgotten. The revisionist approach succeeds: as Norrell points out, the values promoted by Washington have helped many oppressed peoples and were an important part of the Civil Rights Movement. Recommended for both academic and public libraries.-Jason Martin, Univ. of Central Florida Libs., Orlando (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.
*Starred Review* Washington, founder of the Tuskegee Institute and author of Up from Slavery, has long been disparaged for his accommodationist policies regarding racial equality following Reconstruction. Norrell offers a more nuanced perspective on Washington's position in the context of the place and time when he sought to improve education for poor blacks throughout the South. The death of Frederick Douglass and Washington's national speaking debut pushed him into the position of black leader and speaker on the Negro problem. Given his own humble background and reliance on the patronage of wealthy whites, Washington was caught between a strategy of placating whites in the violent South and answering demands for a more aggressive posture on racial equality by blacks in the North. He courted the powerful, including U.S. presidents, always with an eye toward supporting Tuskegee and guaranteeing a nonthreatening strategy for racial advancement. His positions and prominence provoked heated debate and fierce rivalry among other leaders, particularly W. E. B. DuBois. Characterizing Washington's strategy as that of the fox rather than the lion, Norrell details more assertive positions behind the scenes, including efforts to halt the disenfranchisement of black voters in the South. An engrossing portrait of a complex man and a challenging time in the history of U.S. race relations.--Bush, Vanessa Copyright 2009 Booklist
School Library Journal
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Adult/High School-This revisionist biography will inform readers about the merits of probably the most important African-American man of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Norrell provides a clear representation of the sulfurous hate and mortal dangers facing Washington as he built a major university literally from bare ground in a South that despised successful blacks. Washington was also viciously maligned by northern black intellectuals like W.E.B. Du Bois and T. Monroe Trotter, who never faced the lethal dangers menacing him. He is still a controversial figure, but Norrell's volume provides the milieu necessary for understanding his triumphs and defeats against a climate of hatred and terrorism, and, therefore, the reason the founder of Tuskegee Institute deserves respect. Hundreds of quotes bring his story to life. Congressman Tom Heflin shouted in a campaign speech: "If Booker interferes" in this election campaign, "we have a way of influencing negroes down here when it becomes necessary." Norrell writes that the "threat of lynching" by Heflin "spurred whites to a standing ovation." This biography will give teens a precise and keen experience of what it was like to be a black man in the South during Washington's time.-Alan Gropman, National Defense University, Washington, DC (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
A comprehensive reassessment of the life and career of an African-American whose importance has been almost criminally neglected. At the time of Booker T. Washington's death in 1915, the country widely acknowledged the esteemed orator and author of Up From Slavery, the tireless educator and founder of Alabama's Tuskegee Institute, as the successor to Frederick Douglass. But failing health, a late career scandal and a sustained attack by Northern black enemies who deeply resented his preeminence had already dimmed Washington's star, and his historical reputation has only continued to decline. Amidst the poisonous racial climate of the post-Reconstruction era, Washington favored interracial engagement, stressing the educational, moral and economic development of his people as the surest path toward resolving "the Negro Problem." Washington disavowed any "artificial forcing" of social equality and eschewed overt political engagement, instead emphasizing self-help, group solidarity and education with real-world applications to establish an economic basis for racial harmony. His critics accused him of surrendering his dignity to the white industrialists and philanthropists who supported Tuskegee, of ignoble submission to the white politicians who occasionally threw him crumbs, of practically accepting the alleged inferiority of his race and of wanting to keep the Negro "a hewer of wood and drawer of water." During Washington's last decade, the Niagara Movement and the NAACP had both emerged at least in part to counter his "Tuskegee machine," to challenge his seeming stranglehold on black opinion and to counter his gospel of racial conciliation. The powerful pen and the fiery rhetoric of W.E.B. Du Bois began the work, still ongoing, of diminishing Washington's achievement and his competing vision of black progress. In this measured and sympathetic treatment, Norrell (History/Univ. of Tennessee; The House I Live In: Race in the American Century, 2005, etc.) restores some balance, particularly with his detailed survey of conditions in the South. A thoughtful biography that, perhaps, signals a new scholarly appreciation of a remarkable man. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
