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Here is the first of fifteen volumes in a project C. Vann Woodward called'the single most important research enterprise now under way in the field of American black history.'Volume 1 contains Washington's Up from Slavery, one of the most widely read American autobiographies, in addition to The Story of My Life and Work, and six other autobiographical writings. Together, the selections provide readers with a first step toward understanding Washington and his immense impact. These writings reveal the moral values he absorbed from his mid-nineteenth-century experiences and teachers. As importantly, they present him to the world as he wished to be seen: as the black version of the American success hero and an exemplar of the Puritan work ethic that he believed to be the secret of his success. These works, along with so much of Washington's writing, served as a model for many black Americans striving to overcome poverty and prejudice.

Hailed by John Hope Franklin as'a major event by any standards,'and by Benjamin Quarles as'of the greatest significance for the study of race relations in America,'The Booker T. Washington Papers represent one of the most critically acclaimed documentary projects of recent decades. The collected fourteen volumes in the series cover the whole of Washington's life, from his classic Up from Slavery and other early autobiographical works through the tributes lavished on him after his death in 1915. In each individual volume, letters, speeches, articles, and other writings provide rich documentation and a multi-dimensional perspective on the man, his work, and his times. Volume One delves into the experiences, teachings, and moral values Washington believed to be at the core of his later success; Volume Two tells the interwoven stories of Washington's life and his role in establishing the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute; Volume Three charts Washington's rise to prominence as an educator, race leader, and a political broker who used Tuskegee as a base of operations for growing his influence with white philanthropists in the North, southern white leaders, and the black community; Volume Four finds Washington an increasingly accepted national figure in the wake of his Atlanta Compromise speech and addressing both black and white audiences amidst a rising tide of racial inequality; Volume Five follows the uncertain course Washington walked as he publically conformed to the moderate racial politics laid out in the Atlanta Compromise address while covertly involving himself in civil rights struggles via the National Negro Business League and through his political and personal connections; Volume Six covers Washington's 1901 meeting with President Theodore Roosevelt and the controversy that ensued, plus his secret challenges to white supremacy in the South, the Tuskegee Institute's widening influence, and the diminishing prospects for African American rights throughout the country; Volume Seven continues to examine the influence of Washington on Roosevelt and other powerful whites even as he faces new African American challenges to his leadership and philosophy; Volume Eight shows Washington at the peak of his influence and fame, advising presidents on the one hand and controlling a Tuskegee-centered patronage machine on the other while laboring to stem black opposition to his leadership; Volume Nine reveals Washington's advocacy of moderate solutions to racial conflict faltering in the face of intense racism even as he redoubled his efforts to silence black opponents, build a political machine, influence the black press, and maintain his autocratic rule over Tuskegee; Volume Ten explores Washington's political clashes with the new Taft Administration and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, his ongoing efforts to promote better race relations and improve black educational and economic opportunity through outreach to whites and African Americans, and his leadership at Tuskegee; Volume Eleven tracks Washington on his travels and lecture tours in the U.S. and overseas, but also documents his failing fortunes as both an adviser to presidents and administrator of the Tuskegee political machine, and the harm to his reputation in the wake of being assaulted under unusual circumstances in 1911; Volume Twelve covers the last three years of Washington's life when, freed from the constraints he had felt as a presidential adviser, he became more openly critical of racial injustice; Volume Thirteen includes much of the response to Washington's death in 1915, when the likes of Theodore Roosevelt, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Andrew Carnegie paid him public tributes and media on both sides of the color line mourned his passing; V