2 Books Published by Applewood Books on AALBC — Book Cover Collage

African-American educator, author, and leader Booker T. Washington addressed the students and staff at Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, the school he led from 1881 until his death in 1915, with several character-building speeches. In “On Mother Earth,” Washington encourages students to embark on their lives and invest in their future by owning, living on, and working their own land. He believed in building a great and powerful race on an agricultural foundation. “You had better begin life in a hollow tree and be a man, than begin it in a rented house and be a mere tool, the imitation of a man.” This short work is part of Applewood’s “American Roots,” series, tactile mementos of American passions by some of America’s most famous writers and thinkers.

Chapter eleven of W.E.B. Dubois’ 1903 work The Souls of Black Folk is a moving account of the short life and tragic death of his first-born son. In it is the wonder of creation, the bond between mother and child, the awakening love of a parent for his offspring, and the reality of a father of color seeing freedom in the loss. Well sped, my boy, before the world had dubbed your ambition insolence, had held your ideals unattainable, and taught you to cringe and bow. Better far this nameless void that stops my life than a sea of sorrow for you. This short work is part of Applewood’s American Roots, series, tactile mementos of American passions by some of America’s most famous writers and thinkers.