Up from Slavery

Up from Slavery is the 1901 autobiography of Booker T. Washington detailing his personal experiences in working to rise from the position of a slave child during the Civil War, to the difficulties and obstacles he overcame to get an education at Hampton University, to his work establishing vocational schools—most notably the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama—to help black people and other disadvantaged minorities learn useful, marketable skills. While written nearly 50 years after the impactful Twelve Years a Slave autobiography by Solomon Northup, Washington's work provides much of the same insight about slavery in the United States and life as a freedman.