Up From Slavery and The Atlanta Compromise Speech: Illustrated Black History Collection

A nice, unabridged edition of this classic with 28 photographs and illustrations, including the text of his influential 1895 Atlanta Compromise Speech Up from Slavery is the 1901 autobiography of American educator Booker T. Washington. The book describes his personal experience of having to work to rise up from the position of a slave child during the Civil War, to the difficulties and obstacles he overcame to get an education at the new Hampton Institute, to his work establishing vocational schools–most notably the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. His goal was to help black people and other disadvantaged minorities learn useful, marketable skills and work to pull themselves, as a race, up by the bootstraps. He reflects on the generosity of both teachers and philanthropists who helped in educating blacks and Native Americans. In 1998, the Modern Library listed the book at No. 3 on its list of the 100 best nonfiction books of the 20th century.