Three African-American Classics: Up from Slavery, The Souls of Black Folk and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, are all contained in this anthology volume edition. Up From Slavery is the 1901 autobiography of Booker T. Washington detailing his personal ethnic and national experiences in working to rise from the position of a slave during the Civil War in the historical United States, to the difficulties and obstacles he overcame to get an education at Hampton University, to his work establishing vocational schools, most notably the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, to help black people and other disadvantaged minorities learn useful, marketable skills and work to pull themselves, as a race, up by the bootstraps. Up From Slavery is a must read memoir. The Souls of Black Folk is a classic work of African American literature written by W.E.B. Du Bois. It is a seminal work in the history of the field of sociology and the study of social science. The Souls of Black Folk is a African American historical literary cornerstone and was originally published in 1903. The Souls of Black Folk contains essays on race, in which W.E.B. Du Bois drew from his own experiences as an African American in the United States of America. W.E.B. Du Bois was an American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, and editor. W.E.B. Du Bois was also one of the co-founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is an 1845 ethnic & national memoir and treatise on abolition written by famous orator and former slave Frederick Douglass. While often categorized in the genre of biographies & memoirs, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is generally held to be the most famous of a number of African American & Black narratives written by former slaves during the same period. In factual detail, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass describes the historical events of his life and is considered to be one of the most influential of ethnic & national biographies & memoirs to fuel the abolitionist movement of the early 19th century in the Historical United States. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass encompasses eleven chapters that vividly recpature Frederick Douglass's life as a slave and his ambition to become a free man.