The Future of the American Negro was published by Small, Maynard & Company in 1899, two years before Up from Slavery and four years after the Atlanta Exposition Address that made Washington a national figure. The book is essentially an extended policy argument: Washington contends that the economic development of Black communities, particularly in the South, must take priority over political rights and social equality, and that industrial education — training in trades, agriculture, and domestic science — is the vehicle for that development.
Washington’s argument rests on a diagnosis of the post-Reconstruction situation: political rights granted by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments had been effectively revoked by Jim Crow, and the attempt to exercise those rights had produced violent backlash without securing lasting gains. His proposed alternative — build economic power first, and political power will follow — was not a surrender but a strategy, though Du Bois and others would argue that it amounted to the same thing.
The book lacks the narrative drive of Up from Slavery — it is argument rather than story — but it is the clearest statement of Washington’s philosophy and the best text for understanding what he actually believed, as opposed to what his supporters and critics attributed to him.
Collecting The Future of the American Negro
First edition (Small, Maynard & Co., Boston, 1899): Cloth binding.
Market values:
- First edition, near fine: $500–$1,200
- Very good: $200–$500
- Good: $80–$200