Up from Slavery

One of the foremost African American intellectual leaders of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Booker T. Washington, an educator, author, and orator, is best known for his advocacy of black progress through education and entrepreneurship. The Norton Library edition of his seminal autobiography, Up from Slavery, features the text of the first (1901) edition, explanatory endnotes, and an introduction by Jarvis R. Givens that highlights Washington’s life and work, discusses and contextualizes his strategies for racial uplift, and invites a nuanced reading of an author often dismissed for his “conservative” ideology.