Booker T. Washington Delivers a Lesson from Socrates

Mudiwa Pettus Medgar Evers College

Abstract

This article examines a lecture that Booker T. Washington delivered to the Tuskegee literary society in order to argue for Washington’s place within a Black Socratic tradition. Readings of this obscure speech invite new understandings of Washington’s habits of public address, including his pedagogical practice as a teacher of rhetoric, and illuminates how rhetors have mobilized the myth of Socrates to galvanize marginalized communities to civic action.

Journal
Rhetoric Review
Published
2020-07-02
DOI
10.1080/07350198.2020.1764761
CompPile
Search in CompPile ↗
Open Access
Closed
Topics
Export

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (0)

No articles in this index cite this work.

References (23) · 2 in this index

  1. 10.7208/chicago/9780226156293.001.0001
  2. The Negro Problem: A Series Of Articles By Representative American Negroes Of Today
  3. Hopkins, Pauline E. Daughter of the Revolution: The Major Nonfiction Works of Pauline E. …
  4. Ferguson, Cheryl. “Research Inquiry.” Received by Mudiwa Pettus, 18 Apr. 2017.
  5. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism
Show all 23 →
  1. Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  2. The Ebony Column: Classics, Civilization, and the African American Reclamation of the West
  3. Booker T. Washington in Perspective: Essays of Louis Harlan
  4. Booker T. Washington in Perspective: Essays of Louis Harlan
  5. A Brighter Coming Day: A Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Reader
  6. Where the Sacred and Secular Harmonize: Birmingham Mass Meeting Rhetoric and the Propheti…
  7. Advances in the History of Rhetoric
  8. 10.1017/CBO9780511761829
  9. 10.1093/alh/ajl022
  10. Talkin and Testifyin: The Language of Black America
  11. 10.1080/00335630.2018.1447139
  12. Character Building: Being Addresses Delivered on Sunday Evenings to the Students of Tuske…
  13. Character Building: Being Addresses Delivered on Sunday Evenings to the Students of Tuske…
  14. Character Building: Being Addresses Delivered on Sunday Evenings to the Students of Tuske…
  15. The Booker T. Washington Papers: Volume 2 (1860-1869)
  16. The Booker T. Washington Papers: Volume 2 (1860-1869)
  17. - “Up From Slavery. Doubleday & Company, Inc, 1901.” Documenting the American South, U Library, The Universit…
  18. West, Cornel. “How the (Dr. Cornel) West Was Won.” Interview by Dayo Olopade. The Root, 20 Oct. 2009. Web.