Washington explained that the integration of practical subjects is partly designed to "reassure the White community of the usefulness of educating Black people".

[3] Up from Slavery chronicles more than forty years of Washington's life: from slave to schoolmaster to the face of southern race relations.

In this text, Washington climbs the social ladder through hard, manual labor, a decent education, and relationships with great people.

Throughout the text, he stresses the importance of education for the black population as a reasonable tactic to ease race relations in the South (particularly in the context of Reconstruction).

"Boyhood Days": In the second chapter, the reader learns the importance of naming oneself as a means of reaffirming freedom and the extent to which freed men and women would go to reunite their families.

The first introduction of General Samuel C. Armstrong "Helping Others": Conditions at Hampton are discussed in this chapter, as well as Washington's first trip home from school.

In May 1881, General Armstrong told Washington he had received a letter from a man in Alabama to recommend someone to take charge of a "colored school" in Tuskegee.

Washington went there and describes Tuskegee as a town of 2,000 population and as being in the "Black Belt" of the South, where nearly half of the residents were "colored" and in other parts of nearby counties there were six African-American people to one white person.

He explains that he thinks the term "Black Belt" originated from the rich, dark soil of the area, which was also the part of the South where slaves were most profitable.

Once at Tuskegee, his first task was to find a place to open the school and secured a rundown "shanty" and African-American Methodist church.

Here is also the introduction of long-time partners, George W. Campbell and Lewis Adams, and future wife, Olivia A. Davidson; these individuals felt similarly to Washington in that mere book-learning would not be enough.

Tuskegee is also seen to be set in a rural area, where agriculture was the main form of employment, and so the institute's later incarnation as an industrial school that was fit for teaching its students skills for the locale is justified.

She and Washington agreed that the students needed more than a "book education" and they thought they must show them how to care for their bodies and how to earn a living after they had left the school.

This chapter also discusses the institute's relationship with the locals of Tuskegee, the purchase and cultivation of a new farm, the erection of a new building, and the introduction of several generous donors, mostly northern.

Not only did Washington find large donations helpful, but small loans were key which paid the bills and gave evidence to the community's faith in this type of education.

Subsequent speeches were filled with purpose: when in the North he would be actively seeking funds, when in the South encouraged "the material and intellectual growth of both races.

He also gives some explanation of the reaction to his speech: first, delight from all, then, slowly, a feeling among African Americans that Washington had not been strong enough in regards to the 'rights' of the race.

Upon arriving back in the United States, Washington was asked to visit Charleston, West Virginia, near his former home in Malden.

The greatest surprise of his life was being invited to receive an honorary degree from Harvard University, the first awarded to an African American.

When Washington began his writing and public speaking, he was fighting the notion that African Americans were inherently stupid and incapable of civilization.

As would be expected for a man in such precarious position, when violence erupted, he tried to stem his talk of equality and progress so as not to exacerbate the situation.

It is clear that any white person to show sympathy or offer protection for African-American victims would be labeled complicit himself and become vulnerable to violence by the mob.

[citation needed] Since its publication, according to biographer Louis Harlan, Up From Slavery has been read as painting Booker T. Washington as both an "accommodationist and calculating realist seeking to carve out a viable strategy for black struggle amidst the nadir of race relations in the United States."

Washington deserves praise, in the view of historian Fitzhugh Brundage, for "seeking to be all things to all men in a multifaceted society.

For example, biographer Robert Norrell has written, "He worked too hard to resist and to overcome white supremacy to call him an accommodationist, even if some of his white-supremacist southern neighbors so construed some of his statements.

"[15] DuBois, in his book The Souls of Black Folk, congratulates Washington for accomplishing his first task, which was to earn the ear of the white southern population through a spirit of sympathy and cooperation.

DuBois asserts that there are many educated and successful African Americans who would criticize the work of Washington, but they are being hushed in such a way as to impede "democracy and the safeguard of modern society."

The Movement established itself as an entity entirely removed from Washington in conciliation, but rather a new, more radical course of action: "Through helplessness we may submit, but the voice of protest of ten million Americans must never cease to assail the ears of their fellows, so long as America is unjust."

[18] Similarly, Thomas Dixon, author of The Clansman (1905), began a newspaper controversy with Washington over the industrial system, most likely to encourage talk of his upcoming book.

"[19] In September 2011, a seven-part documentary television and DVD series was produced by LionHeart FilmWorks and director Kevin Hershberger using the title Up From Slavery.