Through The Eyes Of A Child

2 Pages 427 Words

Through the Eyes of a Child
One would think that it is impossible to read this story without being ashamed of White America especially in the third paragraph page 746. “Of my ancestry I know almost nothing.” Booker T. Washington was a man of such extensive good will and generous spirit, that he could write about his mother being purchased like a barnyard animal and, on the other hand, could forgive the purchaser as one of slavery's victims too. Up From Slavery tells his story and provides his vision of America's racial future without express hate, in a childlike manner.
Through the eyes of a child, Washington depicts how unfortunate he was as an adolescent yet grew to become one of the nation's leading educators and the recognized spokesman for his race at the turn of the Century. “I had no schooling whatever while I was a slave, though I remember on several occasions I went as far as the schoolhouse door with one of my young mistresses to carry her books. The picture of several dozen boys and girls in a schoolroom engaged in study made a deep impression upon me, and I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study in this way would be about the same as getting into paradise.”(pp.748) Washington had a brilliant observation. Education was in fact a major issue to which would help people like himself reach freedom.
Small things like family gatherings and the clothes for him to wear was something else Washington brought up in his story. Things that we know take for granted was a dream to him. The clothes he was allowed to wear were not fit for anyone to bear. “It is almost equal to the feeling that one would experience if he had a dozen or more chestnut burrs, or a hundred small pin-points, in contact with his flesh.” (pp.750) This story of dreadful conditions is truly disturbing and should serve to silence those who pretend that slavery was a benevolent system. But even after recounting these hardships Washingto...