Study Questions
1. Booker T. Washington had a strong, almost naive, faith in the real and potential harmony of whites and blacks. What instances of interracial cooperation did he recall in his own life? How did his Atlanta Exposition address evoke the ideal of cooperation?
2. Why were some people on Booker T. Washington’s plantation apprehensive about freedom?
3. How was Washington’s life touched by racial injustice? What results did he predict if southerners did not treat blacks fairly?
4. Washington believed that African Americans’ best route to progress was through self-help. How did his life reflect this principle? In what ways did he believe that some blacks were responsible for their own poverty?
5. Booker T. Washington said, “There is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.” Why did he feel it was important to make that point? Was this good advice for African Americans in 1890, or was it condescending?
6. Washington was an optimist in 1895 because he had progressed so far from his slave rags of thirty years before. What might he have thought of contemporary black history if he had been born in 1875? What disadvantages did blacks as a race suffer at the time of the Atlanta address?
1. Booker T. Washington had a strong, almost naive, faith in the real and potential harmony of whites and blacks. What instances of interracial cooperation did he recall in his own life? How did his Atlanta Exposition address evoke the ideal of cooperation?
2. Why were some people on Booker T. Washington’s plantation apprehensive about freedom?
3. How was Washington’s life touched by racial injustice? What results did he predict if southerners did not treat blacks fairly?
4. Washington believed that African Americans’ best route to progress was through self-help. How did his life reflect this principle? In what ways did he believe that some blacks were responsible for their own poverty?
5. Booker T. Washington said, “There is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.” Why did he feel it was important to make that point? Was this good advice for African Americans in 1890, or was it condescending?
6. Washington was an optimist in 1895 because he had progressed so far from his slave rags of thirty years before. What might he have thought of contemporary black history if he had been born in 1875? What disadvantages did blacks as a race suffer at the time of the Atlanta address?