Up From Slavery

Booker T. Washington
Page 665

I have to admit that I was surprised by this reading. I want to focus on the first half of this read, only because it opened my eyes to a way of feeling and life of the slaves during slavery and the Civil War. I thought I had a clear understanding about how they were treated. But, after reading this I understand that not all slaves were treated as bad as others. Also, a lot of the slaves respected and cared for their masters. But, on the other hand this was still heart breaking for me to read and hear about the atmosphere and surroundings he was raised in. That any children would have to be in the middle of this and experience the pain he had to.

Washington starts this story out by giving some back ground on him and his life. He tells us that he is not sure what day he was born to his mother. He picked his birthday once he was an adult.

Washington tells about his childhood and that it was miserable, desolate, and discouraging, although, his owners or master was not cruel to them compared to others that they knew of.
He makes a statement about how he felt he wasn’t a good slave because of his small size and “would have been a more useful man if I had had time for sports” (page 667).

Washington was intrigued with the schoolhouse since he had never had any schooling what so ever. “I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study in this way would be about the same as getting into PARDISE”. I have never heard anyone say this while I was growing up. It made me stop and think about how lucky I am and others in this day and age was that we are able to take advantage of learning.

The part of his childhood that really touched me and melted my heart was when he was talking about how many of the slaves truly loved and cared about their masters. Some of them even took care of their masters who were in need. Page 669 Washington states, “During the Civil War one of my young maters was killed, and two were severely wounded. I recall the feeling of sorrow which existed among the slaves when they heard of the death of ‘Mar’s Billy’. It was no sham sorrow, BUT REAL.” Another one on page 670 that really shocked me is when he’s talking about protecting the maters’ family. “In order to defend and protect the woman and children who were left on the plantations when the white males went to war, the slaves would have laid down their lives. The slave who was selected to sleep in the “big house” during the absence of the males was considered to have a place of honour. Any one attempting to harm “young mistress or “old mistress” during the night would have had to cross the dead body of the slave to do so.” I find this very interesting because all that I have ever been taught in school was that the slaves hated the white man for what they did to them and their race. This story tells me otherwise. I love the fact that Washington says more than once that the black man feels that his word means more to them than anything else. Most of them said that they would not imagine breaking their word. Even though they were not treated always as they would have wanted to be, they always had that moral of keeping their word!