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Since 2004, the book has sold 160,000 copies. It has earned several awards: the Grawemeyer Award in Religion from the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, which had a $200,000 prize, the Southern Book Award for Nonfiction from the Southern Book Critics Circle, the Christopher Award, and the North Caroliniana B...
The book was adapted as a movie by the same name, released in 2010. "Entertainment Weekly" ranked it on a "must see" list.
Tyson has said that the title comes from a slave spiritual later sung as a "blues lament", particularly this phrase: "Ain't you glad, ain't you glad, that the blood done sign my name?"
The book explores the effects of the 1970 killing of Henry Marrow, a 23-year-old black Vietnam War veteran in Oxford, North Carolina. This is the county seat of Granville County, a center of tobacco culture. Then a town of 10,000, it is located 35 miles north of Durham. Three white men were indicted on charges of murde...
Black people organized a protest march to the state capital of Raleigh. In addition, they conducted an 18-month boycott of white businesses in Oxford, a mostly segregated town, to force integration in public facilities. The Marrow case helped galvanize continued African-American civil rights activities in Oxford and ac...
Tyson lived as a child in Oxford, where his father was the minister of the prominent Oxford United Methodist Church. He explores not only the white supremacy of the South's racial caste system but his personal and family stories. (His father was driven out of the church because of his support for civil rights.) Tyson i...
He explores the persistence of discrimination years after passage of federal laws to enforce civil rights, and the more complex aspects of the later civil rights movement.
"Entertainment Weekly" praised its "deadpan, merciless self-examination" and said it "pulses with vital paradox... It's a detached dissertation, a damning dark-night-of-the-white-soul, and a ripping yarn, all united by Tyson's powerful voice, a brainy, booming Bubba profundo." Historian Jane Dailey, writing in the "Chi...
The book was adapted as a film written and directed by writer Jeb Stuart. It was released in 2010, starring Ricky Schroder, Omar Benson Miller, and Michael Rooker. It was filmed in the cities of Shelby, Statesville, Monroe and Gastonia, North Carolina. The African-American historian John Hope Franklin has a cameo in th...
It was also adapted as a play by Mike Wiley, playwright and actor. "Blood Done Sign My Name" (2008) premiered at Duke University's Shaefer Theater. It was also produced at the city hall in Oxford, North Carolina on February 13, 2009.
The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream is the second book written by then-Senator Barack Obama. It became number one on both the "New York Times" and Amazon.com bestsellers lists in the fall of 2006, after Obama had been endorsed by Oprah Winfrey. In the book, Obama expounds on many of the subj...
While a Senate candidate, Obama delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic Convention, entitled "The Audacity of Hope" that propelled him to national prominence. In the less than twenty minutes it took to deliver the speech, Obama was catapulted to sudden fame, with many analysts predicting that he might be w...
In his speech addressing the Democratic National Convention in 2004, Obama said:
The book, divided into nine chapters, outlines Obama's political and spiritual beliefs, as well as his opinions on different aspects of American culture.
"The New York Times" noted that "Mr. Obama's new book, The Audacity of Hope' ... is much more of a political document. Portions of the volume read like outtakes from a stump speech, and the bulk of it is devoted to laying out Mr. Obama's policy positions on a host of issues, from education to health care to the war in ...
The "Chicago Tribune" describes the book as a "political biography that concentrates on the senator's core values", and credits the large crowds that gathered at book signings with influencing Obama's decision to run for president. Former presidential candidate Gary Hart describes the book as Obama's "thesis submission...
An Italian edition was published in April 2007 with a preface by Walter Veltroni, former Mayor of Rome, then leader of Italy's Democratic Party and one of Obama's earliest supporters overseas, who met with Obama in Washington in 2005 and has been referred to as "Obama's European counterpart". Spanish and German transla...
The book remained on the "New York Times" Best Seller list for the 30 weeks since publication. The audiobook version won the 2008 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album.
A number of blogs and newspapers repeated inaccurate rumors that the book contains the passage, "I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction." The actual quote does not mention Muslims at all, referring instead to Arab and Pakistani Americans in the context of immigrant communiti...
Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race is a 2019 book by Thomas Chatterton Williams. It was published by W. W. Norton & Company on October 15, 2019.
Thomas, the son of a black father and a white mother, who grew up identifying as black, explains in the book how he has come to unlearn his racial identity.
The book was published by W. W. Norton & Company on October 15, 2019. Williams appeared on "Real Time with Bill Maher" on October 18, 2019 to promote the book.
At the review aggregator website Book Marks, which assigns individual ratings to book reviews from mainstream literary critics, the book received a cumulative "Mixed" rating based on 11 reviews: 2 "Rave" reviews, 3 "Positive" reviews, 3 "Mixed" reviews, and 3 "Pan" reviews.
Working with the Hands by Booker T. Washington is described by its author as a sequel to his classic "Up From Slavery".
The full title of the work is Working with the hands; being a sequel to "Up From Slavery," covering the author's experiences in industrial training at Tuskegee
Archive.org scan of "Working with the Hands"
This autobiography is an important work that combines political manifesto and political philosophy along with the life story of a young African American revolutionary. The book was not universally well received but has had a lasting influence on the black civil rights movement and resonates today in the Black Lives Mat...
Huey P. Newton co-founded, with Bobby Seale, and was one of the leaders of, the Black Panther Party (BPP). The party was founded in Oakland California in October 1966 at a time of rising racial tension in the USA. There had been serious race riots in the Harlem area of New York in 1964 and Watts area of Chicago in 1965...
While he was in prison, he was visited regularly by J. Herman Blake, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California Santa Cruz. During one visit the idea of writing a book was discussed. The initial idea was that Blake would write a biography of Newton. They began the process while Newton was still in...
The book goes on to describe his time growing up tough on the streets of Oakland, how he taught himself to read by studying Plato's Republic, his political awakening and the formation of the BPP with Bobby Seale. The next chapters detail the shooting of officer Frey, his trial conviction and later release. The later ch...
On its initial publication in 1973 the book was featured on the front page of the book sections of both the New York Times and the Washington Post. This prominence is an indication of the importance of the book at the time although it garnered mixed reviews.
in the New York Times Review of Books, Murray Kempton, wrote a long feature article on the Revolutionary Suicide under the by-line ‘At one and the same time the goodest and the baddest’. The essay focuses more on Newton himself than his book. Kempton, a broadcaster and critic, is both complementary and highly critical ...
Ernest M. Collins from the Department of Government at Ohio University wrote a review, which praised Newton's writing when it was “confined to institutions with which he is familiar” but described his views on the wider political world as ‘shallow’.
A review in the Times in London by John Arderne Rex called it “perhaps the best written book by a black leader to come out of the United States”. Rex was a Professor of Sociology at University of Warwick and an author. He praises the book for being a mature political philosophy and for Newtons interest in social justic...
Newton's writing and ideas met with a mixed reception. Political scientist John McCartney claimed he was the black power movements foremost political thinker. In his book ‘Huey P. Newton, the Radical Theorist’ the scholar of African American politics Professor Judson L. Jefferies discussed how Newton's interest in phil...
The academic Davi Johnson, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Southwestern University claimed that Newtons rhetoric sat in a tradition mould of conservative rhetoric and he and the Black Panther Party, were not the quite the outsider dangerous force portrayed in the media at the time. Johnson pointed out h...
Another academic, Joanna Freer, writing in the journal American Studies, claims that author Thomas Pynchon critiqued Newtons concept of revolutionary suicide in his popular novel "Gravity's Rainbow”. Freer says that Pynchon through his character Wimpe is critical of Newton's belief in Marxist dialectical materialism an...
Judson L Jefferies summarised the reviews of Revolutionary Suicide as “harsh”. He summarises a number of reviews but points out that in many cases the reviews are focused on Newton and the BPP rather than the book in question. He argues that the authors of these reviews seem to be intent on undermining Newton based on ...
The term "revolutionary suicide" was appropriated by Jim Jones, leader of the new religious and socialist movement Peoples Temple. Jones ignored Newton's definition of the phrase, instead using the term to describe actual suicide as a form of revolutionary protest. The term was used by Jones to describe the mass murder...
From 2013 the Black Lives Matter movement rose to prominence in the USA in response to the continuing police brutality against African Americans. Many writers and scholars noted the similarities in the grassroots nature of both the BLM and the BPP and in many of the programs they advocated. Both organisations were form...
The English musician and singer Julian Cope released an album in 2013 called Revolutionary Suicide. He acknowledged that he took the name from Newtons work and explained how he interpreted the term as being about “ultimate freedom” adding” surely we can also be our own hangman if it gets too much?”.
This is followed with an epilogue entitled ‘I Am We” which Newton says is based on an old African saying. In this he reiterates the difference between revolutionary and reactionary suicide and quotes both Mao's Little Red Book and the Gospel of St. Paul to illustrate his point.
The book's original cover photograph shows Newton sitting on a type of throne holding a rifle and a spear. The image was seen as controversial as it played into the violent imagery which had surrounded the BPP. Early photographs of party members in black shirts and berets carrying weapons shocked many. The photograph i...
The original hardcover edition contained several pages of photographs. These include family photographs, photographs of other panther party leaders and one of Newton with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai taken on his visit to China in September 1971.
The first edition was published in hardcover in 1973 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc. New York. This edition did not have an introduction.
In England the publisher was Wildwood House. The book was published in both hardback and paperback editions. . This edition was published with a different cover. It featured a side profile shot of Huey Newton replacing the more controversial enthroned photograph.
In 1995 Writers and Readers published a softcover edition with the original cover photograph.
In September 2009 Penguin books published a paperback edition as part of its Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition series. . The paperback had a deckle edge, a cover illustration by Ho Che Anderson and an introduction by Newton's widow Fredrika Newton. An e-book version was released at the same time.
This book was first released as a serialized work in 1900 through "The Outlook", a Christian newspaper of New York. This work was serialized because this meant that during the writing process, Washington was able to hear critiques and requests from his audience and could more easily adapt his paper to his diverse audie...
Washington was a controversial figure in his own lifetime, and W. E. B. Du Bois, among others, criticized some of his views. The book was a best-seller, and remained the most popular African American autobiography until that of Malcolm X. In 1998, the Modern Library listed the book at No. 3 on its list of the 100 best ...
"Up from Slavery" chronicles more than forty years of Washington's life: from slave to schoolmaster to the face of southern race relations. In this text, Washington climbs the social ladder through hard, manual labor, a decent education, and relationships with great people. Throughout the text, he stresses the importan...
The book is in essence Washington's traditional, non-confrontational message supported by the example of his life.
"A Slave Among Slaves": In the first chapter, the reader is given a vivid yet brief sight of the life of slaves, as seen from the author's point of view. Basically, it speaks of the hardships the slaves endured before independence and their joys and hassles (arguments) after liberty. The first chapter explains about hi...
He explains about his living conditions, and how his mother works hard to make the days end.
"Boyhood Days": In the second chapter, the reader learns the importance of naming oneself as a means of reaffirming freedom and the extent to which freed men and women would go to reunite their families. After families had reunited and named themselves, they would then seek out employment (often far from their former m...
Furthermore, Booker is strongly attracted towards education and oscillates between the extensive schedule of the day's work and the school. The second chapter also describes the character of Booker's mother and her role in his life.
"The Struggle for Education": Washington struggles, in this chapter, to earn enough money to reach and remain at Hampton Institute. That was his first experience related to the importance of willingness to do manual labor. The first introduction of General Samuel C. Armstrong
"Helping Others": Conditions at Hampton are discussed in this chapter, as well as Washington's first trip home from school. He returns early from vacation to aid teachers in the cleaning of their classrooms. When Washington returns the next summer, he is elected to teach local students, young and old, through a night s...
"The Reconstruction Period (1867-1878)": Washington paints an image of the South during Reconstruction Era of the United States, with several assessments of Reconstruction projects including: education, vocational opportunities, and voting rights. He speaks of the Reconstruction policy being built on "a false foundatio...
"Black Race and Red Race": General Armstrong calls Washington back to Hampton Institute for the purpose of instructing and advising a group of young Native-American men. Washington speaks about different instances of racism against Native Americans and African Americans. Washington also begins a night school at this ti...
"Early Days at Tuskegee": Once again General Armstrong is instrumental in encouraging Washington's next project: the establishment of a normal school for African Americans in Tuskegee, Alabama. He describes the conditions in Tuskegee and his work in building the school: "much like making bricks without straw. Washingto...
In May 1881, General Armstrong told Washington he had received a letter from a man in Alabama to recommend someone to take charge of a "colored school" in Tuskegee. The man writing the letter thought that there was no "colored" person to fill the role and asked him to recommend a white man. The general wrote back to te...
Washington went there and describes Tuskegee as a town of 2,000 population and as being in the "Black Belt" of the South, where nearly half of the residents were "colored" and in other parts of nearby counties there were six African-American people to one white person. He explains that he thinks the term 'Black Belt' o...
Once at Tuskegee, his first task was to find a place to open the school and secured a rundown "shanty" and African-American Methodist church. He also travelled around the area and acquainted himself with the local people. He describes some of the families he met and who worked in the cotton fields. He saw that most of ...
He goes on to relate the story of a man aged around 60. He told Washington he had been sold in 1845 and there had been five of them: "There were five of us; myself and brother and three mules." Washington explains he is referring to these experiences to highlight how improvements were later made.
"Teaching School in a Stable and a Hen-house": Washington details the necessity of a new form of education for the children of Tuskegee, for the typical New England education would not be sufficient to effect uplift. Here is also the introduction of long-time partners, George W. Campbell and Lewis Adams, and future wif...
Washington's first days at Tuskegee are described in this chapter, as is his method of working. He demonstrates a holistic approach to his teaching in that he researched the area and the people and how poverty stricken many were. His visits also showed how education was both a premium and underfunded, and therefore jus...
Tuskegee is also seen to be set in a rural area, where agriculture was the main form of employment, and so the institute's later incarnation as an industrial school that was fit for teaching its students skills for the locale is justified.
He encountered difficulties in setting up the school, which he opened on July 4, 1881, and this included some opposition from white people who questioned the value of educating African Americans: "These people feared the result of education would be that the Negros would leave the farms, and that it would be difficult ...
He describes how he has depended on the advice of two men in particular and these were the ones who wrote to General Armstrong asking for a teacher. One is a white man and a former slave holder called George W. Campbell. The other is a "black" man and a former slave called Lewis Adams.
When the school opened they had 30 students and these were divided roughly equally between the sexes. Many more had wanted to come, but it had been decided that they must be over 15 and have had some education already. Many who came were public school teachers and some were around 40 years of age. The number of pupils ...
A co-teacher came at the end of the first six weeks. This was Olivia A. Davidson and she later became his wife. She had been taught in Ohio and came South as she had heard of the need for teachers. She is described as brave in the way she nursed the sick when others would not (such as caring for a boy with smallpox). S...
She and Washington agreed that the students needed more than a 'book education' and they thought they must show them how to care for their bodies and how to earn a living after they had left the school. They tried to educate them in a way that would make them want to stay in these agricultural districts (rather than le...
"Anxious Days and Sleepless Nights": This chapter starts by stating how the people spent Christmas drinking and having a merry time, and not bearing in mind the true essence of Christmas. This chapter also discusses the institute's relationship with the locals of Tuskegee, the purchase and cultivation of a new farm, th...
"A Harder Task Than Making Bricks Without Straw": In this chapter, Washington discusses the importance of having the students erect their own buildings: "Not a few times, when a new student has been led into the temptation of marring the looks of some building by lead pencil marks or by the cuts of a jack-knife, I have...
"Raising Money": Washington travels north to secure additional funding for the institute with which he had much success. Two years after a meeting with one man, the Institute received a cheque of $10,000 and, from another couple, a gift of $50,000. Washington felt great pressure for his school and students to succeed, ...
"Two Thousand Miles for a Five-Minute Speech": Washington marries again. His new wife is Olivia A. Davidson, first mentioned in Chapter 8. This chapter begins Washington's public speaking career; first at the National Education Association. His next goal was to speak before a Southern white audience. His first opportun...
"The Atlanta Exposition Address": The speech that Washington gave to the Atlanta Exposition is printed here in its entirety. He also gives some explanation of the reaction to his speech: first, delight from all, then, slowly, a feeling among African Americans that Washington had not been strong enough in regards to the...
"The Secret Success in Public Speaking": Washington speaks again of the reception of his Atlanta Exposition Speech. He then goes on to give the reader some advice about public speaking and describes several memorable speeches.
"Last Words": Washington describes his last interactions with General Armstrong and his first with Armstrong's successor, Rev. Dr. Hollis B. Frissell. The greatest surprise of his life was being invited to receive an honorary degree from Harvard University, the first awarded to an African American. Another great honor ...
Lynching in the South at this time was prevalent as mobs of whites would take the law into their own hands and would torture and murder of dozens of men and women, including white men. The offenses of the victims included: "for being victor over a white man in a fight;" "protecting fugitive from posse;" "stealing seven...
Some blame Washington's comparatively sheepish message upon a lack of desire for true African-American uplift. Some, taking into account the environment in which he was delivering his message, support Washington for making any public stance at all.
The relationship between Washington and his critics.
In 1905, the Niagara Movement issued a statement enumerating their demands against oppression and for civil rights. The Movement established itself as an entity entirely removed from Washington in conciliation, but rather a new, more radical course of action: "Through helplessness we may submit, but the voice of protes...
Of course there were other participants in this discussion of the future of the African-American race, including that of W. H. Thomas, another African-American man. Thomas believed that African Americans were "deplorably bad" and that it would require a "miracle" to make any sort of progress. As in the case of Washingt...
Similarly, Thomas Dixon, author of "The Clansman" (1905), began a newspaper controversy with Washington over the industrial system, most likely to encourage talk of his upcoming book. He characterized the newfound independence of Tuskegee graduates as inciting competition: "Competition is war…. What will the [southern ...
In September 2011, a seven-part documentary television and DVD series was produced by LionHeart FilmWorks and director Kevin Hershberger using the title "Up From Slavery". The 315-minute series is distributed by Mill Creek Entertainment. This series is not directly about the Booker T. Washington autobiography "Up From ...
The Autobiography of Malcolm X was published in 1965, the result of a collaboration between human rights activist Malcolm X and journalist Alex Haley. Haley coauthored the autobiography based on a series of in-depth interviews he conducted between 1963 and Malcolm X's 1965 assassination. The "Autobiography" is a spirit...
While Malcolm X and scholars contemporary to the book's publication regarded Haley as the book's ghostwriter, modern scholars tend to regard him as an essential collaborator who intentionally muted his authorial voice to create the effect of Malcolm X speaking directly to readers. Haley influenced some of Malcolm X's l...
When the "Autobiography" was published, "The New York Times" reviewer described it as a "brilliant, painful, important book". In 1967, historian John William Ward wrote that it would become a classic American autobiography. In 1998, "Time" named "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" as one of ten "required reading" nonficti...
Haley coauthored "The Autobiography of Malcolm X", and also performed the basic functions of a ghostwriter and biographical amanuensis, writing, compiling, and editing the "Autobiography" based on more than 50 in-depth interviews he conducted with Malcolm X between 1963 and his subject's 1965 assassination. The two fir...
In 1963 the Doubleday publishing company asked Haley to write a book about the life of Malcolm X. American writer and literary critic Harold Bloom writes, "When Haley approached Malcolm with the idea, Malcolm gave him a startled look ..." Haley recalls, "It was one of the few times I have ever seen him uncertain." Afte...
When work on the "Autobiography" began in early 1963, Haley grew frustrated with Malcolm X's tendency to speak only about Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam. Haley reminded him that the book was supposed to be about Malcolm X, not Muhammad or the Nation of Islam, a comment which angered Malcolm X. Haley eventually...
I said, 'Mr. Malcolm, could you tell me something about your mother?' And I will never, ever forget how he stopped almost as if he was suspended like a marionette. And he said, 'I remember the kind of dresses she used to wear. They were old and faded and gray.' And then he walked some more. And he said, 'I remember how...
Though Haley is ostensibly a ghostwriter on the "Autobiography", modern scholars tend to treat him as an essential and core collaborator who acted as an invisible figure in the composition of the work. He minimized his own voice, and signed a contract to limit his authorial discretion in favor of producing what looked ...
Haley's contribution to the work is notable, and several scholars discuss how it should be characterized. In a view shared by Eakin, Stone and Dyson, psychobiographical writer Eugene Victor Wolfenstein writes that Haley performed the duties of a quasi-psychoanalytic Freudian psychiatrist and spiritual confessor. Gilles...
In "Malcolm X: The Art of Autobiography", writer and professor John Edgar Wideman examines in detail the narrative landscapes found in biography. Wideman suggests that as a writer, Haley was attempting to satisfy "multiple allegiances": to his subject, to his publisher, to his "editor's agenda", and to himself. Haley w...
You are serving many masters, and inevitably you are compromised. The man speaks and you listen but you do not take notes, the first compromise and perhaps betrayal. You may attempt through various stylistic conventions and devices to reconstitute for the reader your experience of hearing face to face the man's words. ...
In "Two Create One: The Act of Collaboration in Recent Black Autobiography: Ossie Guffy, Nate Shaw, and Malcolm X", Stone argues that Haley played an "essential role" in "recovering the historical identity" of Malcolm X. Stone also reminds the reader that collaboration is a cooperative endeavor, requiring more than Hal...
Though a writer's skill and imagination have combined words and voice into a more or less convincing and coherent narrative, the actual writer [Haley] has no large fund of memories to draw upon: the subject's [Malcolm X] memory and imagination are the original sources of the arranged story and have also come into play ...

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