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In this very frank and compelling autobiography, Walter E. Williams sets the record straight on his very public life, and in the process discusses some of the past in general— contrasting growing up black and poor in the 1940s and 1950s to the same today. As Williams says early on in his story, “just because you know where a person ended up in life
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In this very frank and compelling autobiography, Walter E. Williams sets the record straight on his very public life, and in the process discusses some of the past in general— contrasting growing up black and poor in the 1940s and 1950s to the same today. As Williams says early on in his story, “just because you know where a person ended up in life doesn’t necessarily provide you with any certainties as to where he might have begun.” In Up From the Projects, he recounts many achievements that would have been unfathomable by his ancestors, underscoring his belief that, unlike so many other societies around the world, in America one needn’t start out at, or anywhere near, the top in order to eventually reach it.
Williams describes his humble beginnings growing up in a lower middle class, mixed neighborhood in West Philadelphia in the 1940s, raised by a strong and demanding mother who held high academic aspirations for her children. He recalls the teachers in middle school and later in high school who influenced him the most—teachers who always gave him an honest assessment of his learning and accepted no excuses. In describing his army experience, Williams recounts incidents of racial discrimination but stresses that his time in the army was a valuable part of his maturation process. He tells of his time “getting established” in Los Angeles—struggling happily through the first years of his marriage, getting his B.A. at Cal State LA and then his graduate degree at UCLA. As he describes his academic career, moving from teaching one class a week at Los Angeles City College to his eventual department chair at George Mason University, we find him overcoming one obstacle after another, accepting help when it is offered but never asking for special treatment, and ultimately illustrating that in America everything is indeed possible.
He leaves the reader with a key bit of advice, passed on by his stepfather and reflected throughout his own life: a lot of life is luck and chance and you never know when the opportunity train is going to come along. Be packed and ready to hop on board.
"When I finished reading Up from the Projects, I wished it had been a longer book. But it got the job done—and its insights are much needed today."
--Thomas Sowell, the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution
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