Publishers Weekly
Today's struggle over the role of Booker T. Washington is "actually a struggle over the soul of the black community," argues Debra Dickerson, one of 20 contributors to this anthology, which highlights the complex position of one of America's most famous-and controversial-black leaders. Carroll (Saving the Race; Sugar in the Raw) brings together a diverse array of African-American voices, including economist Julianne Malveaux, linguist John McWhorter and broadcaster Karen Hunter. Washington's reputation has waxed and waned since his death, mostly due to his quasi-segregationist rhetoric, and the collection reflects these disparate views of him. Some contributors side with Hunter in her declaration that "he was a great man"; others align themselves more with Malveaux, who states, "[T]here are some things about Booker T. Washington that were purely evil." Nearly every contributor agrees, however, that whatever Washington may have said or thought, he is a preeminent example of self-realization through hard work and determination. Wisely refraining from a final verdict, this book exemplifies the diversity and value of African-American thinkers past and present. And Carroll's decision to include the complete text of Up from Slavery in the volume makes this an ideal choice for book clubs. (Jan.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
With his famed Atlanta exposition address in 1895, Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) succeeded the just-deceased Frederick Douglass as America's national black spokesman. Carroll (editor in chief, Independent Film & Video Monthly; Saving the Race: Conversations on Du Bois from a Collective Memoir of Souls) reprints Washington's 1901 autobiography, Up From Slavery, prefacing it with 20 contemporary perspectives on what exactly Washington's legacy has been or should be. Her contributors discuss education, ethics, economics, identity, and community; they comment not merely on ex-slave Washington's chosen path for blacks to take from slavery to freedom and his ranking in the pantheon of black heroes and villains, but also the best path for black advancement today and tomorrow. They invariably return to the old split between economic self-advancement and political struggle, between Washington's bottom-up, mass-based approach and W.E.B. Du Bois's top-down, "Talented Tenth" approach. West (history & Africana studies, Coll. of the Holy Cross) enters the debate with a five-chapter biographical essay that seeks to place Washington in his own time and place and to match his program with the possibilities of his day. Parsing the vocabulary and grammar that Washington used to render his vision of the "Negro problem" and its national solution, the author portrays Washington as a practical, moral idealist who constructed a vision dubbed "race relations" to reconcile the clashing values of democracy and apartheid. Provocative in conception, West's work redirects thinking about basic issues of segregation and racial justice. Along with Carroll and her contributors, West's reflections offer fresh considerations on the complex consequences of American racism, of its contemporary relevance, and of blacks' sometimes schizophrenic thinking about securing their self-identity, position, and advancement in America. Both books are recommended for collections on black life and history.-Thomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., Tempe Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
