The Future of the American Negro.

Founder of Tuskegee Institute and a leading African-American voice at the turn of the century, "Booker T. Washington told his people that they would survive the dark present and, as far as possible, he showed them how to do so" (Norell, Up from History, 441). Issued not long after his 1895 "Atlanta Compromise Speech," Future of the American Negro appeared at the height of a decade that "was for Washington the most influential period of his life… To most of his students and faculty at Tuskegee, and to millions of poor blacks nationwide, he was a self-made and beneficent, if stern, Moses leading them out of slavery and into the promised land… He strategically chose not to force the issue [of racism] in the face of the overwhelming white hostility that was the reality of American race relations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In this sense, he did what he had to do to assure the survival of himself and the people for whom he spoke" (ANB). The first of Washington's major works, Future of the American Negro precedes his autobiographies and draws from public speeches and articles printed in Atlantic Monthly and other publications. Washington's second clothbound book, this follows the publication of a 15-page inspirational work, Daily Resolves (1896), and a collection of passages from speeches, Black Belt Diamonds (1898).