The Book Club: Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington with Carol Swain

Welcome back to the Book Club. I'm Michael Knowles. This month, we will be discussing Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington, with the great Carol Swain. But first, in our fast-paced world, it is tough to make reading a priority. Well, at least it used to be. But now, thanks to Thinker.org, you can go check out. They have summarized the key ideas from new and noteworthy nonfiction, giving you access to an entire library of great books in bite-sized form. You can read or listen to hundreds of titles in a matter of minutes, from old classics like Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, to recent bestsellers like Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life. If you want to challenge your preconceptions, forget about that. If you want to expand your horizons, forget about that. If you want to sound smart at parties, then you should head on over to Thinker.org. That is T-H-I-N-K-E-R.org. No E. No one's got time for that. Start a free trial and put your mind in motion. Carol Swain. Carol Swain, a writer, a podcaster, a movie star. I've now seen you in a couple of movies. Former professor at Vanderbilt and Princeton, which is unbelievable these days that someone with any conservative views could last there for even five seconds with the way that conservative academics are treated. Thank you so much for being here. I have to say, I was not a conservative when I was hired by Princeton, and Vanderbilt didn't know that I had converted. That would make more sense. Now I can understand how that would be possible. Carol, you suggested this book. I had never read it. Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington. Because when I was in school, I was told that leaders of the African American community were people like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, then going back a little bit further to kind of the era of this guy, W.E.B. Du Bois, who is a noted socialist African American leader and started the NAACP. But this man, the best of any of them, has more or less been written out of history. Absolutely. I grew up in Virginia, and that's where Booker T. Washington was born and raised. But he was a former slave that was emaciated when he was nine years old. He went on to get educated and became the president of the Tuskegee Institute, which is now Tuskegee University. The book is about his life, starting with his childhood. It progresses through his education, his walking to Hampton Institute, to work his way through school. In fact, he was the originator of work-study, and he became the first president of an institution. He founded the institution. Students built it. And it's about how he formed the alliances with whites across the nation to get funding for that school. And he became the most important black leader of the 19th century. He was the undisputed most important black leader of his era. And yet today, it seems that there is an effort underway, particularly by people in academia, in education, even though he was one of the great educators of his time, to erase him from that history. Why? What is it about this guy, Booker T. Washington, that they don't like? They don't like the fact that he was not someone that was agitating for civil rights at the time. And you think about it, blacks were coming out of slavery. He focused on their becoming educated. He believed that if blacks improved themselves through education, through work, through industry, that civil rights would come later. And so that was not a popular position. He has been dismissed as an accommodationist, but he was a pragmatist. And he was someone that really outlined principles for self-improvement and self-reliance that I believe would be applicable to today. And I wish every American would take the time to read the book. It's a short book. It's an easy read, but it's chock full of information that's relevant for today. I love this point on pragmatism, because he's written off this. He didn't ask for enough. He wasn't radical enough. He wasn't political enough. It's not as though politics never occurred to Booker T. Washington. It's not as though radical agitation never occurred to him. But he realized that the only way that he and his race would have a firm footing in America, would have real power and real influence, is by building up their own economic base, their own skill base, their own community, not merely being handed some political power for some brief period of time that could go away. He has this line, he says, the individual who can do something that the world wants done, will, in the end, make his way regardless of race. I think today, that would be called a racist statement. Maybe so. And you know, he was a master politician. He understood whites and blacks and human nature. And one of the things that I really respect and admire about him was that he was a man of faith, and he recognized slavery, or he felt that it was part of divine providence that brought blacks to America. And he felt that the blacks in America, and we can say the same thing today, that they're better off than blacks anywhere else in the world. He also recognized that slavery hurt white people too, because it did not allow people to develop their own skills. And so after blacks were emancipated, there were many whites that didn't know how to do anything. They were helpless. That's right. He says they had been relying on black slave labor, and so they didn't know what to do. Some of them became actually very impoverished. And this point on providence here, he acknowledges pretty explicitly by the end of the book, he's one of the most celebrated Americans. He's speaking with presidents. A president visits the Tuskegee Institute. He was sent on a trip to Europe. And he said, discussing the conditions of Africa with some of the most important diplomats in the world, he had concluded that American blacks would not benefit from emigrating from America and going back to Africa. Right. There's so much that I love about Booker T. Washington and the way he thought. And for my own story, I was a high school dropout, one of 12 children born and raised in rural poverty in southwest Virginia, about 10 miles from Booker T. Washington's birthplace. And talk about providence. And some of the principles that he talked about for his own success was that he sort of imagined himself where he wanted to be. Like he looked at people that were successful and he watched what they were doing and he sort of modeled that. And I think those principles do work. And I think in my own life, I applied some of that. I read the book as a child and I still dropped out of school. But those principles about education, I always believed in education. And so eventually I earned my high school equivalency. I went to a community college and got the first of five degrees and I became a university professor. And I've always respected Booker T. Washington and have really questioned why he was marginalized at the elite institutions where I earned my degrees. Well, I have to brag for you a little bit. It's not just that you became a professor. You became a professor at some of the top institutions in the country and you won the top prize for an American political scientist, the Woodrow Wilson Prize. Yes. And yes, I did. And I earned early tenure at Princeton in three years. And I've had much success, but it was because all I wanted was an opportunity. All Booker T. Washington wanted was an opportunity. We wanted to prove ourselves. And so we worked very hard applying those very principles that he talks about in the book that I believe would work today and does work today for many people who have discovered the secret. And he was never angry at whites because of slavery. This point on slavery I think is so important because W.E.B. Du Bois, who's kind of considered his foil, I guess, in the history of civil rights and black leadership in America. W.E.B. Du Bois was not born into slavery. Booker T. Washington is the last man of his ilk who was. He knew it. And he describes in fairly pitiless detail some of what he had to go through as a slave. But he said he never got discouraged by that or by anything else. He has a great line. He says, I don't think I've ever been discouraged from doing something that I want to do because I have the confidence that I will be able to do it as long as I work hard and stay focused. Well, the interesting thing to me looking at the messages that young people get today in America, whites and blacks, it makes it seem as if black people have never been able to accomplish anything. And the true story of America and American history is whites and blacks working together. And so he was able to develop and build Tuskegee Institute. But he had assistance from whites who were his mentors. Right. And one in particular he talks about is General Armstrong. He said he's the greatest man he ever met. And he really helped to guide him as Booker Washington went from living under a bridge, or living under a sidewalk rather, trying to work his way through the Hampton Institute to then building the Tuskegee Institute and remained a great mentor until the end of his life. And the interesting thing about the end of General Armstrong's life, it was in Alabama at Tuskegee, it seems to me, that that's where he died. So they were lifelong friends. And initially when Booker T. Washington was chosen to be the head of this new institute, the people that approached General Armstrong, they were looking for a white man. They wanted a white man. He chose Booker. And rightly so. I mean, when you read about what this guy has accomplished, you begin to really, I think, become frustrated with how he's been treated historically. That now he's being just treated as, as you said, an accommodationist or something. This is a man who was totally aware of the realities of his time. And he was strategic. He was hardworking. He has this line that he gave at the Atlanta Exposition address, probably the most famous address he ever gave. And the line is, I would repeat what I say to my own race. This he's now addressing a white audience. He says, I would repeat to you what I say to my own race. Cast down your bucket where you are. He's alluding to a story here of, there's a ship at sea and they don't have any water. And they say, please give us water. And the people on the ship, they say, just cast your bucket down. You can get the water. We don't know. Please give us water. Cast your bucket down. Do it. Build yourself up. That is the only way, regardless of your race, that you will have lasting and stable influence and a good life. Well, that's true today. I think about America and all the opportunities. Booker T. Washington, you know, he was born into real systemic racism. And, you know, people like me, I was born in 54, the year of the Brown versus Board of Education decision, desegregating schools. That was systemic racism. What young people are experiencing today in America is not systemic racism. There's so many opportunities. Anyone born poor, white or black, all they have to do is cast down their bucket because America is a country where the vast majority of people, they believe in equal opportunity. They want people to succeed and experience the American dream. On this American dream point, I'm reminded that in recent months, people have been tearing down statues, not just of Robert E. Lee, not just of bad old Confederates, but tearing down statues of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. And Francis Scott Key. And Martin Luther King would be next because they can go after him over the feminist stuff. That's right. That's right. There's no end. If you want the perfect guy in American history on a statue, you'll have an empty statue. But when I noticed Washington's last name here, Booker T. Washington was not born Booker Washington. He was just known as Booker because he was born as a slave. He didn't really have a last name. And he chose Washington. He chose to model his last name after the founder of this country. And yet today, so many radicals want to besmirch that whole founding and tear down Washington himself. And also his stepfather was named Washington. And so it was a combination of the two. But he was a man of destiny. Again, he looked at great people and where he wanted to go and he modeled himself after their success principles. And his focus on education, education is the great uplifter, but he knew that everyone wasn't supposed to go to college and become a philosopher or a political scientist or a black studies major or whatever, that he knew the importance of the trades. Well, he said this, he said it always frustrated him when he would see these people coming in to finally get an education and all they wanted to do was study French and become these very abstract thinkers when they didn't have two nickels to rub together. And he said, learn an industry, be able to support yourself first. And he has a great line about preachers and politicians. He said, after emancipation, all of a sudden, a lot of black, free blacks decided they wanted to run for Congress or they'd be a preacher. They wanted to be a preacher because they didn't want to actually have to do manual labor. They didn't, they want to work. He said, there were a lot of people who would toil in the fields for a few days and all of a sudden, coincidentally, they got the call to become a preacher. And he said, enough of that, work. He told his students at Tuskegee, work, build the bricks, build the school itself. You will get so much more of a reward for that in your education. And you know, during the period of reconstruction, immediately after the Civil War, there were, I would say hundreds of blacks that ran for political office that were in state legislatures. There were 22 that ended up in Congress during that era, all Republicans. And then once the North abandoned the South, all of those people were removed from office. But if they wanted to be a politician, it meant that they were not out there, you know, building businesses or learning trades or making themselves valuable to the society. And what Booker T. Washington believed is if they worked hard enough, if they had the skills, if they were successful, nothing could hold you back. And the wealth that they built enabled them to send their children to colleges and schools. And so by the time W.E.B. Du Bois comes along, 1903 in his book, The Souls of Black People, there's been like maybe 2,500 black college graduates and 400 from elite schools. That distinction, I suppose, is the key here, because on Booker T. Washington's idea of dignity, he makes it as explicit as he can. He says, there is as much dignity in tilling the field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life where we must begin. That is a cold, hard, real view of the world. And I think it gets to a point that is lost when we consider Booker Washington, which is the specific circumstances that he was living in. This is right after the end of slavery, an institution in which he himself was born. He also focused on educating the hands, the head, and the heart. And for him, he saw that he was dealing with a population of people that most of them were illiterate. They needed to be educated and they wanted to get educated. And so within about 20 years, the literacy rate among the newly freed slaves, it skyrocketed. People went out, they learned how to read and write. That was important to them. They valued education. And during that time of the turn of the century, there were quite a few black millionaires. And that's a part of our story and a part of our history that's not being told. And the marriage rate among blacks, it rivaled the marriage rate among whites. And the marriage rate among blacks did not begin to decline until the 1960s. That is a chilling fact. And so you can't blame slavery. You can't blame slavery for the dysfunction that you see in black communities. But that's what's always blamed. They always say it's the legacy of slavery. And that's why we need more government policies and reparations and social programs. And then they'll fix the problem. Well, you're saying that that isn't true. Booker T. Washington, his message, his story, his success, the generation that came out of slavery, their successes, that's an inconvenient truth for the political left. So yes, hide Booker T. Washington. Hide all those blacks who were successful. Hide all the success that took place before affirmative action. Just hide it. Pretend it didn't happen. And then you can believe that blacks are inferior and that only white people can save them. White people have been trying to save blacks since slavery. And look at the condition of the community. They're saving them by putting abortion clinics in every neighborhood. Right. A little counterproductive, you might say. The word save does not really mean what they're doing. And consider the circumstances in which Booker Washington and so many people of his generation succeeded. There were actual lynchings going on then. There was Jim Crow, compared to today, much harder circumstances and much greater success. Well, you know, one of the lines that Booker T. Washington spoke in his Atlanta exposition, in all things social, we can be as separate as the fingers and as one as the hand with things that have to do with mutual success and mutual achievement. So that was something that he was widely attacked for saying, that he was not pushing for integration and social equality. Well, this was the era when blacks were being lynched if they looked at a white woman or if a white woman accused them. It did not make any sense that during the spirit of lynching and with blacks having so many needs that he would have been pushing for integration and he would have been pushing for the vote and civil rights. He was pushing for the betterment of the race and also to show white people what black people could do, given an opportunity. And I would say that he proved his case. He did prove his case. And to look back now from the social conditions of 2020 and attack him for a line like that, that completely ignores the political and social realities of the time, to me seems extraordinarily prideful and ignorant. He has this line here, he says, the wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremist folly and that progress and the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing. He's not even making a prescriptive statement here and saying this is the way things should be. He's simply saying this is the way things really are. Well, also, we know that he was involved, you know, behind the scenes with funding civil rights efforts and he was involved with encouraging people, speaking to presidents. He did a lot of his things, almost everything outside of the spotlight. He was not a spotlight seeker. We know that in this whole debate that W.E.B. Du Bois and the elites, they won the day. And pretty much you see the black dysfunction of today. I think it's a direct result of that because W.E.B. Du Bois, he became a socialist and a communist. He died in Ghana. He renounced his U.S. citizenship. And you look at Black America today, the Black Lives Matter movement, Antifa, all of those various leaders that are pushing blacks in a particular direction. These are Marxists. These are communists. They're admitted Marxists. I mean, they say we are trained Marxists. And they are using black people's suffering. Black people, there's a lot of suffering, especially among the people who are poor, the ones that were so poor that affirmative action never reached them. They are the ones that are being exploited at this moment. We need Booker T. Washington. We need the book read in classrooms. And we need it being taught by teachers that really care about black people, not people who are pushing a leftist agenda. Booker T. Washington belongs to all Americans. Well, as you say, though, W.E.B. Du Bois and the socialists and the left of that civil rights movement, they did win the day. And that's why the NAACP, the organization that Du Bois founded, is still so prominent. Not pushing for blacks, pushing for LGBT rights and a whole bunch of other things that have nothing to do with black people. They are socialists. They are Marxists. And it's not hidden anymore. It's not hidden. And speaking of hiding some of your efforts, and, you know, obviously Booker T. Washington, one of the most famous men of his day, and he said he would use fame, he would gladly accept fame if it helped him to be useful to other people. He didn't want fame for fame's sake. Some people do want that. He said he would use it to be useful. And when fame was not useful, when it was more useful for him to work behind the scenes, he did that as well. It reminds me of that line that Reagan would quote all the time, that there's no limit to what a man can do if he doesn't care who gets the credit. I know. And this other thing that I really admire about him, and I'm a person of faith, but not always. I mean, I came to faith late. But he says that he prayed before every address. He got on his knees and prayed before every address. And I think for black America, there was a lot of success. They were the most Christian of the Christians. They have lost a connection with their Judeo-Christian roots. And they still have pastors and reverends that are scoundrels. Just like in Booker T. Washington's day, they have people that did not hear the call of God. They heard the call of dollars. Easy dollars. And so they are manipulating people. And it's very serious. It's a disgrace. I'm sure we could name a few of those reverends right now, though. Perhaps we will not. But I mean, we know the reverends that don't have congregations, but I'm talking about the reverends that are actually leading people in churches or misleading people. And to me, that is the travesty that's taken place. That the leftists of America, the progressives, are controlling the black church. And so they're doing it with the critical race theory and that beautiful language of social justice. Who can be against social justice? Who could be against Black Lives Matter? We all agree with that. And the sadness about that is, for the average person, they hear Black Lives Matter. And of course, Black Lives Matter. Yeah, no one disagrees with that. And most of them would agree that all lives matter, except our leaders tell them, no, that's racist if you say all lives matter. Separate the slogan, the true statement, Black Lives Matter, from an organization that was birthed into Marxism. It was Marxist from the very beginning. The two founders have been very open about that. That's right. Yeah, you can't knock them for being dishonest. They are telling you what they believe. But they only started saying that recently, back in 2016, when I gave a CNN interview where I'd gone to that website and I urged people to go and I called them Marxists. I paid dearly for that from my university, sending out a statement. Well, what happened to Booker T. Washington is happening to people, and I dare say Press & Company included, today. When you say hard truths, when you say things that are unpopular in the leftist orthodoxy, you get shut down, you get silenced, you get written out of history. And yet, you don't seem to get discouraged. And Booker T. Washington said that he wouldn't get discouraged. How's that? No, I mean, I stand on truth. And the thing about the left is that they try to strip the truth speakers of everything. And so, there's nothing to be lost by speaking truth. There's plenty to be gained because when you go to sleep at night, you go to sleep knowing that you've done a good thing. So, even if you lose your career, you lose some money, maybe, you lose some opportunities, ultimately, you can only gain by speaking the truth. Yes, and it matters a lot, being a person of faith. Because, ultimately, if you lose your life, that doesn't matter that much either. Because people of faith believe, you know, this is just a journey that we're on. This is not our final place. And what you do with the life that you have, because we're all going to die, no one gets out of this world alive, make it count. Booker T. Washington made it count. I hope to make it count. I try to. And I hope that other people will, too. And I hope people will be willing to take the risk. And right now, the most important thing I would say for people that are watching is that they read this book, and then encourage other people to read it. And that this book would not be something that's just in the dustbins of history. It's an important book. It needs to be read today. It needs to be applied. Well, this is such a point on, I mean, obviously, you've dedicated much of your life to education. Same thing goes for Booker T. Washington. And what is it? We're talking about up from slavery. Booker T. Washington literally pulled himself up from literal slavery. His focus on education isn't a coincidence, because so many people today find themselves in a mental slavery. And the only way that you can ensure that slavery persists is by closing books, shutting yourself off from education. And frankly, the only way that any of us are going to get out of whatever sort of slavery we're in is through a real education, the kind maybe that we don't see so much today, but the kind that you and Booker T. Washington talked about. Well, unfortunately, today in America, we have the mis-education of our young people, whether it's in public or private schools or elite institutions. They're not being taught the history they need to know. And that's why they're turned down monuments. Instead of learning from history, they're trying to erase history. And it's not going to end well unless we change course. That's right. You know, there's this moment early in the book that just occurred to me now at this point, which is when Booker T. Washington is finally going to start becoming educated, going to this school. And all the students wore hats. Right. His mother made him a hat. Yeah. They couldn't afford to go to the store and buy hats, so his mother found some denim on the floor and his mother made him a hat. And he got made fun of for the hat. But he said, the lesson my mother taught me, and this has always remained with me and I have tried as best I could to teach it to others, I've always felt proud whenever I think of the incident, that my mother had the strength of character enough not to be led into the temptation of seeming to be that which she was not, of trying to impress my schoolmates and others with the fact that she would be able to buy me a store hat when she was not. So he wears this ugly homemade hat. It's not as polished as all his classmates. And yet this is the point he keeps coming back to time and time again. Be the real thing. Don't try to pretend to be something you're not. Don't try to pretend to have something that you're not. Work, work, work, and you will be that thing that you otherwise would have pretended to be. And my impression from reading that passage was that he wore that hat proudly. Yes, he did. He did. Now, if only I could have Booker T. Washington's hat, I probably couldn't wear it as well. It's this point that even when he gives us the schedule for students at Tuskegee Institute, they said, how do you keep all these kids out of trouble? You've got all these young people coming here, and most of them don't have very much of an education. How do you keep them out of the trouble that we see on college campuses today? And he said, well, listen to the schedule. They wake up at 5 a.m. They work. Then they have breakfast. Then they study. Then they go to prayers. Then, you know, talk about educating the heart, the mind, the hands. Then they work again in the fields. Then they make some bricks. Then they study for a few more hours. There'd be no time to get into trouble. They say idle hands are the devil's playground. Booker Washington never took a vacation. They had to beg him. They had to give him the money. They had to basically throw him on the ship just to get him to take one vacation in his life. Education here, I suppose, is the key. But I can't help but notice when excellent, formerly highly praised and lauded educators such as yourself, who then now dare say the conservative message, are kicked out. Is there any hope for education in America? And I guess broadly on this point, is there any hope for the— I haven't given up on America, on its educational system. I believe that there is hope. And so I just think that we just have to keep speaking truth and go back to basics. And for a lot of us and for America, the basics includes the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution. We need to rediscover that, learn from it, and I believe it would change lives. Do you have hope for the future of race relations in America? We seem to be at one of the lowest moments of race relations, certainly in my lifetime, probably in the last 50 years. If we can educate people, then there's hope for America. And I believe that there are many blacks who are waking up and white people, and I hope this doesn't sound, quote, racist. They'll call it racist, whatever you say. The thing about white people is that they have totally, some of them have given up. They don't know what to do. They don't know what to say. And so they are supporting movements like Black Lives Matter when they really are supporting it out of fear, this idea that white people are buying into all this racist language out of guilt. I mean, that has to end. And so it's going to take white people and black people working together to move us forward. And the hope has to do with our Judeo-Christian values and principles. If you believe that every human being is in the image of God and that we are brothers and sisters, then your approach to race is going to be different. We can prosper, but we have to change the way we approach race relations. Well, you know, there's another book we've done on this show, 1984. I love that book. It's such a tremendous book, another book about this time. And the slogans that come out of that are freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength. And people seem to be living that out today. They really are. But as you say, there is hope if only we can counter this prevailing, enslaving, ignorant narrative that is being foisted on us. One way to do that would be to pull back some of the secret knowledge, including Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington. And, by the way, to listen to your podcast, Be The People, and follow your work, which I always try to do because I enjoy it so much. And it's so, so contrary to the lies that are being pushed out by many of the other institutions of power. Carol, we've taken up enough of your time already, but thank you so much for being here. Well, thank you for what you're doing, and God bless Prager University. Absolutely. And the book club. Thank you. Another great educational institution, maybe not quite yet of the influence of Tuskegee Institute, but, you know, we're working on it. It's on its way. It's on its way. Thank you, Carol. I'm Michael Knowles. Tune in next time for The Book Club. Thank you so much for watching this episode of The Book Club on Prager U. Prager U is a 501c3 nonprofit organization, so we rely on donations from viewers like you to keep this content on the air. Please consider making a tax-deductible contribution today to help keep this content coming. Thank you very much.