The Legacy of Washington

Running head: THE LEGACY OF WASHINGTON
THE LEGACY OF WASHINGTON
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1THE LEGACY OF WASHINGTON
Booker Taliaferro Washington was one of the pioneering intellectuals who had played an
active role in championing the rights of the people of colour in the United States of America in
order to fight racialism in the post civil war period in the country. Being of African American
descent, and born to parents who were slaves, brought up at a farmyard of Virginia amidst a lot
of difficulties, he had never given up. Over the years by means of receiving holistic education he
had made himself capable of being the one to show people belonging to his racial background
the path to development. The most notable contributions of his has been to disseminate the
importance of education in bringing one up from the quagmire of oppression and making oneself
self sufficient. In this particular essay his legacy as a leader of the blacks and other oppressed
people belonging to non white racial background in the post civil war period shall be discussed,
in light of his autobiography, ’Up From Slavery’ and his Atlanta Speech.
His autobiography, ’Up From Slavery’ is a memoir of the journey of his life from being a
child of a slave to his rise to the prestigious position of a school master. ’Up From Slavery’ very
vividly portrays the struggle which he had had faced in his life to reach up to a position from
where he could exert life changing influence upon the lives of the oppressed ones, which had
continued for as long as forty years.
The autobiography very eloquently expresses the differences in the social conditions
pertaining to the racial dynamics of the region where he resided, the southern part of the country,
which used to be infamous for inter racial tensions. He had mentioned that the years preceding
the civil war and abolishment of slavery in the United States of America were marked by
immense hardships, which were relatively relaxed in the post civil war period. Growing up
witnessing, the hard labour his mother had to devote to bring food to the table, the thoroughly
miserable condition of life that they led caused by the ill treatment of the white masters and

2THE LEGACY OF WASHINGTON
underpayment of salaries, and the brutality perpetrated on the child labourers of the city of
Malden, Washington had decided that he shall be breaking free from the shackles of oppression
(Washington).
His conviction for leading a better life had driven him to pursue education seriously so
that he could not just change his own life but also that of others of his kind. Washington had used
the example of his mother whom he considered as a victim of the system of slavery. She was a
noble woman and performed all her duties diligently, yet she was accused of being a thief. Like
her, there were many other slaves who tended on to their masters with the fullest fervor, yet the
reward was meagre and beatings were an inevitable part of the fate of the slaves. Some slaves
could even go to the extent of laying down their own lives for their mistresses but the children of
the whites grew up to thrash the slaves who nurtured them. He had thus taken to manual labour
to supplement the expense of his education, as he had made it his goal to pursue his education at
the Hampton Institute. All of it despite not having pleasant memory about manual labour which
was the prerogative and duty of the slaves and was not very rewarding.
From helping out his teachers to keep the classrooms clean and tidy, he was gradually
promoted to the level which enabled him to be a teacher to students of all ages at night classes,
on Sundays and even by means of delivering lessons privately. That was his first encounter with
teaching and later during the period of Reconstruction he had tried to expand the horizon of his
work by actually doing something concrete in terms of making the vision of making the lives of
the blacks better. The promise of providing educational and vocational opportunities to the
oppressed race of the country was actually fulfilled by Washington by setting up of the Tuskegee
school (Washington).