With few exceptions, the Negro youth must work harder and must perform his tasks even better than a white youth in order to secure recognition. But out of the hard and unusual struggle through which he is compelled to pass, he gets a strength, a confidence, that one misses whose pathway is comparatively smooth by reason of birth and race.

p. 19

White privilege or black privilege? The privilege of suffering? Booker T. Washington, American educator, orator, and author, has been lauded for his leadership and vision for the Black community after the Civil War and during the days of Reconstruction and Jim Crow. He has also been criticized and even vilified for his “accommodationism” to white power and supremacy. In reading his autobiography, I came to the conclusion that he was both intelligent and wise, choosing to do the work that could be done in the time and cultural milieu in which he was placed. He did much to improve the status and education of Black people in a time and place (late 19th and early 20th centuries in the Deep South, U.S.) when such a movement was not only discouraged but oppressed and disallowed.

Historian C. Van Woodward in 1951 wrote of Washington, “The businessman’s gospel of free enterprise, competition, and laissez faire never had a more loyal exponent.” And indeed, isn’t the basis of today’s Critical Race Theory partly the idea that the structures of business and education must be changed to end discrimination against and oppression of Black people. Isn’t that what Mr. Washington was attempting to do as he encouraged Black citizens to gain skills, build wealth, and create their own businesses and educational institutions, free of the racism embedded in the institutions they were barred from attending, supporting, or owning.

Booker T. Washington is indeed somewhat self-aggrandizing over the course of his autobiography, always talking about the speeches he was asked to make in grand places, the money he was able to induce others to contribute, the numbers of students he taught, the schools he built. And yet, success breeds success. Up From Slavery is partly a sales pitch for more people to contribute time and money to the vision that Washington had for the advancement of his people. And it is a successful sales pitch.

“People called Washington the “Wizard of Tuskegee” because of his highly developed political skills, and his creation of a nationwide political machine based on the black middle class, white philanthropy, and Republican Party support.” I would like to see his detractors do more, considering the time and place in which he worked. And his idea that Black people can and should use the suffering and adversity to which they were subjected to make themselves stronger and more confident applies to all of us who face difficulties in our lives.