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Booker T. Washington

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Booker T. Washington and Tuskegee Institute In this book Booker T, Washington expresses his ideas about the plight of the African Americans on top of infusing ideas on their empowerment through education. The book entails also ideas he expressed in his speeches and letters which highlight his enigmatic, complex views, as the leader of the black minority group. It is also a recount of the liberation struggles and inner life of the black community which has grown from slavery, struggled to get educated and economic empowerment and more so assimilation in the American society. Washington’s ideas here expressed forging the relationship between the African Americans and whites in the South. However, by careful analysis of the views expressed, serious issues arise as per as his programme of reconciliation of the South, where the whites educate the blacks, highlighting silence and submission on the part of Negroes as opposed to fight for political and civil activism, pointed to his myopic vision. This was unknowingly a way of selling the blacks rights in the hope the same whites who had oppressed them for many years and hampered their humane progress, would help them (Moore, 2003). This is not to mean the ideas he expressed were all negative. He had good ideas for the black community needed to be polished by other black scholars and leaders to acculturate them in the American society. Washington shares his views where he internalizes values got from his godfather (Armstrong) in education. He believes the whites would readily listen to blacks who were neatly dressed and educated to portray diplomacy in negotiations. Although he way in some extent right, he overestimated the whites response to this perspectives. However, he explores ways in helping and improving the conditions surrounding the plight of the black people in working with their former oppressors. In

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