ENG 232: American Literature Survey

This project examines the response to Booker T. Washington's death, analyzing the many ways in which both black and white Americans involved in the Yankee Protestant Ethic Movement honored or memorialized the great visionary. Hamilton reexamines Washington's influences, thereby producing a new understanding of his life. This book examines the ways that the memory of Washington and his works were cultivated and utilized by his contemporaries to promote racial consciousness.

This volume uses an interdisciplinary approach to examine Washington's life. It reflects on obstacles that remain despite Washington's influence, and aspires to serve as an inspirational vehicle towards educational and economic change.

Michael Boston offers a radical departure from other interpretations of Booker T. Washington by focusing on the latter's business ideas and practices. More specifically, Boston examines Washington as an entrepreneur, spelling out his business philosophy at great length and discussing the influence it had on black America. He analyzes the national and regional economies in which Washington worked and focuses on his advocacy of black business development as the key to economic uplift for African Americans.

In this major reconsideration of Booker T. Washington's life and thought, Michael Rudolph West explores why Washington's ideas resonated so strongly in the post-Reconstruction era and considers their often negative influence on the ongoing struggle for equality in the United States. According to West, Washington's "race relations" offered a "solution" to the problem of racial oppression.

Harlan reveals Washington's complex personality. This book chronicles the challenge Washington faced from W.E.B. Du Bois and other blacks, and shows how growing opposition forced him to change his methods of leadership just before his death in 1915.

This collection brings together some of Booker T. Washington's writings along with essays about him by others. Hugh Hawkins edited this book as part of the Problems in American Civilization series.