KEY FACTS SUMMARY

Title
Up From Slavery: An Autobiography

Author
Booker T. Washington

Date Published
1901

Meaning of the Title
It refers to Washington’s determination to raise himself out of the mentality of a slave and raise his people of as well.

Setting
Franklin County, Virginia; Malden, West Virginia; Hampton, Virginia; Tuskegee, Alabama; various states in America and various countres in Europe1858-1901

Protagonist
The Protagonist is Booker T. Washington who spends his life trying to lift his people up from slavery. He perseveres in every endeavor he tries and eventually founds the Tuskegee Institute to promote education and industry.

Antagonist
The Antagonists include: white people whom Booker must win over to his cause and whom he believes are basically decent and good; and his own people whose faith he must strive constantly to keep alive.

Mood
Overall, the mood is one of setbacks interspersed with optimism. Washington emphasizes the optimism and believes that whites and blacks living together in harmony is not only possible, but probable in spite of the ghost of the institution of slavery.

Point of View
First Person

Tense
Since it is an explanation of the life of Booker T. Washington, it is written in the past tense.

Rising Action
The rising action begins with chapter one when the reader is introduced to Booker T. Washington through the narrative of what he knew about his birth until his triumphant speech at the Atlanta Exposition where the world really became aware of his ideas and what he had accomplished and what he hoped to achieve.

Exposition
The author begins from his birth and chronologically relates events of his life through 1901.

Climax
The climax comes with Booker’s address to the Atlanta Exposition. Here, for the first time, a Negro stands on the same platform as white speakers. It is in this speech where he uses the metaphor of “Cast your buckets down” and he is wildly congratulated for making the Negro’s position and advancement in America better known to the white race.

Outcome
At the end of his autobiography in 1901, Booker believed that there was optimism for his race in America, and he predicted that the day would come when the races mixed freely and cooperatively. That feeling was the result of his speech in Richmond, Virginia in a building near where he had once been forced to sleep under a wooden sidewalk. He recognizes how far he has come.

Major Themes
The importance of education; the dignity of work; the net of slavery; the relationship between the races; and the measurement of success.

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