48 pages • 1 hour read
Booker T. WashingtonUp From Slavery
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1901A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “A Slave Among Slaves”
Chapter 1 outlines Washington’s sparse memories of his childhood. He was born into slavery on a rural Virginia plantation. He does not know his exact birthday (he believes it to be in 1858 or 1859) and knows nothing about his father or any other relatives beyond his mother and siblings. During their enslavement, the family shared a small cabin with dirt floors, no windows, and a wood-stove where his mother labored as the plantation cook. Booker T. Washington vividly remembers the board-covered cellar in the middle of the floor, where he would occasionally be able to get a sweet potato as a treat.
As a young boy, Washington was too small to do any serious labor for the plantation. Often, he was tasked with taking corn to the mill by horse, a job he hated. He remembers the fear he felt while riding alone through the countryside, having heard stories about rogue soldiers hiding in the woods, waiting to attack Black boys. When he was slightly older, he worked in the house fanning flies off the dinner table, a job he enjoyed more because it allowed him to listen to conversations about the ongoing Civil War.
Washington remembers his mother and the other enslaved adults talking about freedom and excitedly sharing the latest war updates, gathered through the “grape-vine telegraph” from snippets of white peoples’ conversations. Despite their enslavement, he writes that many of his fellow Black people on the plantation genuinely cared about the white family, especially when several of the young men were injured or killed fighting in the war. He emphatically states that he does not condone slavery, but he highlights several examples of how Black people felt a duty to their former enslavers even after the war ended. Since enslaved people performed nearly all household duties, Washington writes that the white Southerners had virtually no practical skills and were often unable to run their farms and households without a vast enslaved labor base. He reports that many skilled Black tradespeople ended up helping their former enslavers, who were left destitute.
When the war ended, a man arrived at the plantation and read the Emancipation Proclamation to everyone working and living there. The Black people had been anticipating their freedom for months and immediately began to celebrate when it became official. After a few hours, though, a sense of dread descended over the formerly enslaved people. They had been praying for freedom for years, but now they would have to figure out how to build lives of their own out of nothing.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Boyhood Days”
After Washington is freed along with his mother and brother, they pack a small cart and set out on foot for West Virginia. During their time in slavery, Washington’s mother married a man from another plantation. During the war, he found his way to the salt mining town of Malden, and he brings Washington’s family to live with him as soon as they are free. Life in Malden is hard; in Washington’s young mind, it feels no better than being enslaved. The town is crowded, dirty, and rowdy. Washington is sent to work in the salt mines, often starting work at four o’clock in the morning.
As he toils in the salt furnaces, Washington longs to learn to read. Somehow, his mother finds him a copy of an old spelling book, which he pores over daily. Eventually, the Black community in Malden decides to start a school, since almost everyone in town yearns for an education. Washington’s stepfather does not allow him to quit working to go to school, but this does not deter him from attending whenever he can. He finds teachers to come to his house after work, gets up extra early to work, and for a short time secretly sets the clocks in the furnace building ahead by half an hour so he can leave in time to get to the schoolhouse as quickly as possible.
Washington eventually finds work in the nearby coal mines, a job he has always feared due to the danger and darkness. He worries that many of his fellow coal miners have become “physically and mentally dwarfed” (39) and will never have ambition to do anything except labor in the mines. He begins to resent the white people who are born into privilege, and he daydreams about how much easier it would be for him to gain social and intellectual power if he had not been born Black. Writing as a much older man, he reflects on these former beliefs and says that he is proud of being Black and does not harbor the same envy he had in his youth. While the white men around him may have had an easier time reaching their positions, he sees their achievements as less remarkable because they did not have to overcome the same struggles that he and his fellow Black intellectuals did. Furthermore, as someone who does not know his family history and has no legacy to uphold, Washington feels he is able to build his own legacy to pass down to his descendants.
Chapter 3 Summary: “The Struggle for an Education”
As a teenager still working in the coal mine, Washington hears other workers talking about the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, a boarding school for Black people that has opened in Eastern Virginia. He immediately decides he will find a way to attend. After working in the mines for a few more months, he finds a job in the household of Viola Ruffner, a wealthy, very demanding Northern woman who has trouble keeping employees due to her strict temperament. Washington writes that while Mrs. Ruffner intimidated him at first, they became good friends. He credits her with instilling him with personal discipline and cleanliness, traits that would be valuable when he worked as a janitor at Hampton to help pay for his place there. He also appreciates that she supports his education and allows him breaks in the workday to study.
After saving up a small amount of money, Washington sets out on the 500-mile trip to Hampton. He runs out of funds in Richmond and spends several days sleeping under a walkway, making a small wage unloading ship cargo. Eventually, he reaches Hampton, but he is almost turned away due to his ragged appearance. After impressing the head teacher by cleaning a room just as Mrs. Ruffner taught him, he is allowed to stay. He eventually befriends the teacher, Miss Mary F. Mackie, as well as the school’s founder and principal, former Union General Samuel C. Armstrong. Armstrong will later become a lifelong friend and one of the people the writer admires most. After the war, the general dedicated himself to helping both Black and white people throughout the South, and Washington credits him with instilling a sense of pride and purpose in every Hampton student. The school became crowded with eager learners very quickly, but many students were ready and willing to live in freezing tents in order to allow others the chance to study there. Washington writes that Armstrong would visit the tent dwellers daily, encouraging them to persevere in their studies despite the hardship. Washington also praises the team of “Yankee” teachers at the school, as well as his fellow students. He writes that no one appeared to be there for selfish purposes: All were trying to help their families or were working toward the common good. The school and its students benefitted from the generosity of wealthy Northern benefactors, who would send money to fund poor students’ tuition and clothes to help the students meet General Armstrong’s exacting standards of grooming.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Helping Others”
After his first year at Hampton, Washington owes the school a small tuition debt and cannot afford to return to his family. He takes a job at a nearby restaurant, but he barely makes enough to survive the summer and grows increasingly anxious that he will not be able to return to school. The school treasurer agrees to let him pay the debt when he is able to. He begins to realize more and more that the school employees care deeply for their students. He also begins to learn more about the Bible from a teacher named Miss Nathalie Lord, who also trains him in public speaking. He becomes an enthusiastic member of the school debating society, never missing a meeting.
After his second year, Washington has saved up enough money to spend the summer at home. The salt mine workers are on strike at the time, and he struggles to find a summer job. While he is away from home looking for work, his mother unexpectedly dies. Without his mother’s leadership, the household is thrown into turmoil, and Washington calls this the darkest period of his life. He is glad when he is asked to return to Hampton early to help Miss Mackie clean the school buildings in preparation for the new year. He is impressed with her willingness to clean alongside him despite her status as part of an elite family. He begins to value the dignity of labor, and he criticizes other schools for Black people, which he believes are training students to look down on hard work.
After graduating from Hampton, Washington works in a hotel for the summer before returning to Malden, West Virginia to teach. His experiences at Hampton have convinced him that Malden’s children need to learn practical skills, such as personal hygiene, in addition to academic topics. Soon, Washington finds himself working constantly, teaching children during the day, adults at night, Sunday school on the weekends, and taking on several private tutoring clients. He helps his brothers John and James prepare for and attend Hampton.
Washington writes that his years in Malden coincided with the height of the Ku Klux Klan. Groups of KKK members would roam the South at night, burning schoolhouses and churches and looking for Black people to harass or attack. In Malden, a conflict broke out between Black citizens and KKK members that resulted in serious injuries to many, including General Lewis Ruffner, Viola Ruffner’s husband, who had entered the fray in defense of his Black friends. At the end of the chapter, Washington states that the “Ku Klux period” seems to be over, writing, “To-day there are no such organizations in the South, and the fact that such every existed is almost forgotten by both races. There are few places in the South now where public sentiment would permit such organizations to exist” (79).
Chapters 1-4 Analysis
The first several chapters of Up From Slavery cover Washington’s childhood and teen years. He depicts himself from the beginning as hard-working and eager to learn, and his teen years are a period of rapid transformation. He is born into slavery on an unnamed plantation in Virginia. He estimates his birth year to be 1858 or 1859, but later research carried out after his death would reveal that he was actually born in 1856. Thus, he is several years older than he estimates throughout all of the events of the book. He never knows his birth father, although it is believed he may have been a white man. This reflects a common occurrence in the South at the time; white men would impregnate enslaved women, often non-consensually, and would never claim the children as their own or take any part in their lives. The details of his mother’s marriage to a man from another plantation are never explained, but eventually this man becomes Washington’s stepfather. As a child, Washington somewhat resents his stepfather for forcing him and his brothers to work in the salt mining industry instead of going to school. Washington is forced to give his earnings to his family, and he implies that his stepfather often spends them on his own needs.
While Washington initially resents his work in the salt mines, he later comes to see it as a valuable early lesson in Perseverance Through Hardship. Meanwhile, Washington’s mother teaches this same virtue by example. She instills a sense of responsibility in him from an early age, and he admires her ability to perform thankless work on the plantation while enslaved and still provide her children with small luxuries such as a taste of molasses every Sunday. She is also committed to helping him get an education. She is illiterate and sees Washington’s learning to read as a major step forward for their family.
During his time in Malden, Washington begins to feel some of the same resentment toward hard work that he will ultimately come to see as a cultural flaw among the Black community. He hates working in the salt and coal mines due to the long hours and danger, but mostly because the work prevents him from dedicating all his time to studying. He notes that many people who begin work in the mines as children appear “physically and mentally dwarfed” (39) by the work, and “soon lose ambition to do anything else than to continue as a coal miner” (39). Much of the book can be seen as a reaction against this tendency to become trapped by difficult circumstances. Key to Washington’s understanding of Perseverance Through Hardship is that one must not only endure hardship but also continually work toward self-improvement.
The first seeds of Washington’s lifetime philosophy begin to appear in Chapter 3, when he goes to work for Viola Ruffner. In Mrs. Ruffner’s household, he begins to see the value in doing necessary tasks well, the first emergence of the major theme of Manual Labor as Noble Work. He credits Mrs. Ruffner with instilling in him a desire for order and a readiness to work for it that he carries with him for the rest of his life: “Even to this day I never see bits of paper scattered around…that I do not want to pick them up at once. I never see a filthy yard that I do not want to clean it…” (43). The implication is that orderliness in the physical environment reflects an inner, moral order. This association is confirmed when Washington arrives at Hampton and is immediately judged for his appearance but later redeemed when he exhibits his cleaning ability. Washington’s educational viewpoint develops when he enters Hampton, where Black students are taught practical manual skills alongside academic topics. He proves himself as a top student not only because of his intelligence, but by his willingness to work constantly and do whatever is needed to pay for his place there. In later chapters, he will praise this system in comparison to other schools he visits, where he feels that students are becoming more and more disinclined toward physical work, preparing instead for scarce, difficult to obtain professional jobs. Washington shows his ability as an educator in these early chapters, as well. When he returns to Malden, he is able to help many children prepare to enter Hampton.
The young Washington works in Malden at a particularly violent time, when the Ku Klux Klan is a powerful organization and many Black people fear for their lives. At the time of Up From Slavery’s writing, he feels assured that this type of violence is in the past, and that organizations like the KKK would not be accepted in contemporary Southern society. In fact, the Klan was in decline at the end of the 19th century, but it surged back to life in 1915—inspired by the enormous popularity of D. W. Griffiths’ racist film The Birth of a Nation—and reached peak membership in the 1920s. In retrospect, Washington’s premature declaration of the Klan’s demise reflects an optimism about racial progress—and about the good intentions of white people—that could sometimes appear naive. Many have criticized Washington for bending to white supremacy, but throughout the book, it becomes clear that he genuinely believed that the vast majority of white society had Black people’s best interests in mind, and that racial violence and discrimination would naturally subside if given enough time.
