Customer Reviews

Character Building

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This is a collection of BTW's Sunday sermons to his Tuskegee students. Originally published in 1902, the lessons on thrift, clean living, sharing what you learn with others, the need to read, and the value of education of the heart as well as the head are still valuable a century later. Does not date too badly and with so many young people growing up today without this kind of advice in the home, it's needed just as much today.

Many uninformed people dismiss BTW as an "Uncle Tom," but the publication of more of his writings like this will show that in spite of any faults, he was a very useful person in the upliftment of people. Read it and see.

Proves that some kinds of advice are timeless. If you are reading a historical review of the man's life, you should read his own words too.

Character Building (An African American Heritage Book) This book has so many wonderful life lessons which are just as powerful and thought-provoking today as they were when Booker T. Washington wrote them at the turn of the 20th century. I try to read an essay to my students on a regular basis because the essays really hit home with some of the issues my students have. The essays are well-written and easy to read and understand.

Booker T. Washington was a man who believed that hard work and character were the determining factors in life. Born into slavery, he became educated by the force of his own determination and personality. He arrived penniless at the Hampton Institute in Virginia and left with an education. Not too long thereafter, in 1881, 18 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, he went on to found the Tuskagee Institute. His objective was to provide a college-level education for blacks so they could go forth to become schoolteachers in the rural South, and to teach mechanical skills which would help black people earn a living, free themselves from debt and become property owners in an agricultural society.

This is a series of homilies on the virtues of character. It is pretty similar to what you would read from white preachers of the same era. Horatio Alger stuff. You get some sense of the life of black people from the things that he lectures against, drinking, dissipation, and dandyism. But his spirit was always to accentuate the positive.

Of the two books I have read by Washington, I found "The Future of the American Negro" to be more informative. While this book provides good lessons for life in any age, The Future gives very useful insights into the situation of black Americans around the turn of the 20th century.

This particular item is poorly edited. Paragraphs are repeated over again. Lines begin and end poorly. It is as if someone just typed this up one night, sent it to the printery and put it up for sale and never once checked to see if there were no errors. While I am glad that I have this very important piece of history, the product itself is terrible and not worth the cost.