of Booker T. Washington, born into shackles yet able to rise above the impossible background from which he came, through the self-improvement that accompanies a thorough education. Featuring his famous “up by the bootstraps” passage, Washington urged his black readers to follow in his footsteps and use hard work and education as a means by which to end the subjugation, poverty and racism that held down his fellow African Americans in the United States.

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