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The Washington papers continue to garner critical acclaim as a major publishing enterprise in Black and American historiography. Throughout their corpus, they reveal the private world of black Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and provide vivid personal perspectives on interracial relations during the'age of accommodation.'Between 1909 and 191, Booker T. Washington remained the most powerful figure in black America. His dominance, however, did not go unchallenged. Both the newly inaugurated President William Howard Taft and the newly founded National Association for the Advancement of Colored People were at odds with Washington. In addition, his influence was further strained by the spread of race riots, lynchings, and laws discriminatory toward blacks. Still, Washington continued his efforts to promote better race relations and improve black educational and economic opportunity. On speaking tours in the South, he drew large enthusiastic crowds of both races who were captivated by his charismatic intelligence and style. He also remained very much involved with the daily life and administration of Tuskegee - among other things, redefining George Washington Carver's duties at the institute. This period alo saw his continued work on My Larger Education (1911), a sequel to Up from Slaver, and The Man Farthest Down (1912), a study of the working classes in Europe.

Covering Washington's career from September 1895 - after the Atlanta Compromise address thrust him into prominence as the black spokesman whites were willing to listen to - to December 198, when President William McKinley visited Tuskegee, the papers in this volume demonstrate Washington's growing fame and public acceptance. Throughout this period, although he continued his close paternal watch over Tuskegee, he became increasingly involved with the concerns of the national black community, speaking to overflow audiences of both races all over the country. This was a time of increasing racial segregation as evidenced by the landmark Plessy v. Fergusson decision, which established the'separate but equal'doctrine not only in transportation but in public accommodations and education. Washington reacted strongly to this, and several years later, in response to the rising tide of discrimination, he delivered his controversial Peace Jubilee speech, calling upon the South to bury racial and sectional prejudice in the trenches of San Juan Hill, where black and white, northerner and southerner, had united in a fight for freedom.

When Booker T. Washington died in November 1915, he was mourned by blacks and whites alike as a national hero. Such prominent figures as W.E.B. Du Bois, Theodore Roosevelt, William H. Taft, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and Julius Rosenwald publicity paid him high tribute. Distinguished journals and newspapers published editorials praising his work and lamenting his passing. The present volume includes much of this response to Washington's death and, in covering the final two years of his life, brings to a close one of the most critically acclaimed documentary projects of the past two decades.

From September 1912 through March 1914, Washington continued his heavy schedule of speaking, fund-raising, race leadership, and close supervision of Tuskegee Institute. Although the election of Woodrow Wilson to the presidency led to the dismantling of the Tuskegee Machine's political arm, Washington remained a prominent figure in the political arena. During this period, however, freed from the constraints he had felt as presidential adviser, he became more openly critical of racial injustice. His most sweeping and direct attack appeared in'Is the Negro Having a Fair Chance?'published in The Century a few days after Wilson's election. In this article he criticized the continuing existence of job discrimination in the North, and of Jim Crow transportation and poor education opportunities in the South. Washington continued to advocate economic and educational means for black advancement, persuading the Phelps-Stokes Fund to finance a study of black secondary and higher education and creating in 1912 the Tuskegee Five Year Fund. Despite the changing times and gradual decline in his personal vigor, Washington's actions hardly suggested the little time he had left to live.

In 1911 and 1912 Washington continued to travel, lecture, and write in America and abroad. In England and Europe he studied working-class conditions and included his observations in The Man Farthest Down (1912). During this same time period, however, he and his Tuskegee Machine suffered systematic shocks from which they only partially recovered. Washington's political role as presidential adviser declined steadily during Taft's administration. The decline itself was overshadowed, if not hastened, by Washington's involvement in a highly sensationalized incident - his brutal beating at the hands of Henry Albert Ulrich in early 1911. While this act stimulated a wave of sympathy from Washington's supporters, the circumstances surrounding the incident provided added fuel for his detractors.

The contrast between Booker T. Washington's private actions and public utterances continues to be revealed in this latest volume in the much-acclaimed series. Although very little changes at Tuskegee Institute during this period, Washington's leadership was faltering in the face of a virulent white racism that appeared in the North as well as the South. Still, he continued his public pursuit of and optimism for moderate solutions to racial dissension. At the same time, however, he privately redoubled his efforts to silence his black opponents, build his personal political machine, influence the black press, and maintain his autocratic rile over Tuskegee Institute.

Fame and influence far beyond that accorded any other black leader of the period continued to bolster Booker T. Washington's career in the two years covered by the most recent volume in this major project in black history. Volume 8 finds the Tuskegean becoming more and more a national figure, consolidating his position as presidential adviser and patronage broker, while still trying to quell black opposition to his leadership. Various letters catalog his ability to direct political'plums,'to thwart the organization of potentially threatening groups, and to gain more honors for himself.

The phenomenal impact of Booker T. Washington on his time is underscored in this volume, documenting both Washington's continuing influence upon President Theodore Roosevelt and the growing dissatisfaction of some blacks with Washington's philosophy and leadership. The letters provide social historians and laymen alike with an abundant store of information on the man many consider to be the most influential figure in black history.

Probably nothing in Booker T. Washington'life had as much symbolic significance for the blacks for whom he claimed to speak as the day he dined with President Theodore Roosevelt at the White House, October 16, 1901. Not even the publication of his autobiography earlier that year had indicated so clearly just how far'up from slavery'Washington had traveled. Though criticized by many, the dinner was a sign, especially to his black supporters, of Washington's arrival at the heart of power in America. Even as Washington expanded his political influence to become a counselor of presidents, the racial climate was worsening and black political rights in the South were plummeting. Volume 6 documents the events of this somber period, including Washington's secret challenge to the Alabama grandfather clause. It also includes evidence of T. Thomas Fortune's diminishing influence with Washington and the extension of the Tuskegee Machine's web of influence into the North.

This volume turns from emphasizing Washington's institution-building (Tuskegee Institute) to examine those writings which reveal more about the black leader's growing role as a national public figure. Volume 5 covers a period during which Washington's fortunes continued to rise even as those of the black masses, for whom he claimed to speak, declined. Though forced to adhere narrowly to the racial philosophy he had espoused in the Atlanta Compromise address of 1895, Washington nonetheless was able to involve himself covertly in matters of civil rights and politics. He used the National Negro Business League as a front for political activity. He successfully lobbied against disenfranchisement of black voters in Georgia during November, 1899. During these years Washington began behind-the-scenes civil rights activities that foreshadowed a much more elaborate'secret life'after the turn of the century. He worked with lawyers of the Afro-American Council to test in the courts the grandfather clause of the Louisiana constitution of 1898, raising money to pay the legal costs and swearing the other participants to secrecy. T. Thomas Fortune, the leading black journalist of the day, was Washington's close personal advisor as he sought to spread his sphere of influence from his southern base to northern cities. Also included are writings on the first convention of the National Negro Business League, Washington's address before the Southern Industrial Convention in Huntsville, Ala., and the full text of Washington's first book, The Future of the American Negro, published in December, 1899. A fascinating view of Booker T. Washington and the milieu in which he operated, Volume 5 provides further reason to call the project, as C. Vann Woodward has done,'the single most important research enterprise now under way in the field of American black history.'

In his lifetime Washington was the most influential African American in the United States. In this volume the editors hope to convey the shaping forces of his early life. They have gathered and annotated more than 400 documents, including letters, speeches, articles, and other writings from shortly after Washington's birth in 1856 to the death of his second wife in 1889. Much of the material relates to the founding of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute. Washington's life became so interwoven with his school that to illustrate his career is also to tell the story of the institution.

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