The Awakening of the Negro Response

Booker T. Washington was born on April 5th, 1856 to a slave named Jane. He didn’t know much about his white father, but knew that he was classified as one of the mixed- black children. Washington’s autobiography Up From Slavery was focused on the commercial, agricultural, educational and industrial advancement of the African American society. In one of his entries “The Awakening of the Negro”, Washington focuses on helping the negroes from slavery to make something of themselves in their lives and not waste their time doing labor the hard way.


As a child Washington was inspired to success by this young girl who was poor. She wanted to play the piano and convinced her parents to rent a piano for some money each month. As a teenage black man, he was inspired to go to Hampton Institute to study and realize the real meaning of labor. I slept under a sidewalk, and by working on a vessel next day I earned money to continue my way to the institute, where I arrived with a surplus of fifty cents (Washington, 1896). By this quote, it explains to us that money back then did not stop people from achieving their dream. As a society today, we have to realize the sacrifices that the past has suffered just to give us what we have today. Washington was an intelligent individual who realized that Christian influence was apart of his spirit self-help. With aid from the State and generosity from the North, has enabled to develop an institution of eight hundred students gathered from nineteen states (Washington, 1896). After realizing what it took to be a man, Washington built Tuskegee Institute which became a great success in training young black men and women to become something of themselves from slavery. Students do the brick-masonry, plastering, painting, carpentry work, tinning, slating, and make most of the furniture (Washington, 1896). The purpose of the students to build the chapel is to give them a real idea of how you can build something successful and use it. They wanted to expose them to the real world and see if they could handle what they think they might possibly do for the rest of their life


Washington talks about this one negro who went to Tuskegee and graduated. In these meetings he taught the people in a plain, simple manner how to save their money, how to farm in a better way, how to sacrifice,--to live on bread and potatoes, if need be, till they could get out of debt, and begin the buying of lands (Washington, 1896). By a young black male graduate coming back to his home teaching the adults on how to save their money from only a three month program is remarkable; talk about inspiration!!!!!!!!! I think what Washington was trying to do was with his students is make them feel like they are wanted and needed for the education that they have chose to know. This leader, this guide and object-lesson, to show them how to take the money and effort that had hitherto been scattered to the wind in mortgages and high rents (Washington, 1896). Since this particular boy went to school, he was able to save his family and the others around him form making those bad decisions. This quote talks about how one person can steer others in the right direction. I believe that because this by was able to host meetings about their financial situations, Washington must have been proud to know that his work is paying off on somebody’s life.


The negro, it is to be borne in mind, worked under constant protest, because he felt that his labor was being unjustly required, and he spent almost as much effort in planning how to escape work as in learning how to work (Washington, 1896). Another system of Tuskegee was to get the negroes to understand the easier concepts of their work. They wanted them to actually learn the proper way of labor and not think about how they are going to escape it and quit. As the slave became free, he thought that the real world’s labor was going to be the same as the slave labor, so he always put the work to the side. There was no need to repair the wooden chimney that was exposed to the fire, because the water could be thrown on it when it was on fire (Washington, 1896). This is a perfect example of the slave’s mindset; they became lazy at doing the job when they knew they had a choice if they wanted to do the task that day or later.



Booker T. Washington wrote his autobiography to inspire the African American society. “The Awakening of the Negro” talked about educational and industrial training that put a mark on the economics of that time and how to make it better. The flaws about this entry was I felt at times the same thing was repeated over again, but in a different way or example. Washington kept talking about what Tuskegee had to offer for two pages front to back and it got kind of boring. I liked this entry because it taught me that a black man went to school and taught others to look out for themselves and told them how to labor their time wisely.