Booker T. Washington Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description

Booker Talifero (T.) Washington (April 5, 1856 - November 15, 1915) was an African-American educator born into slavery in Piedmont, Virginia. After the American Civil War, when the Emancipation Proclamation was enforced, he worked with his mother Jane as a salt-packer in a West Virginia facility, and, when he could, attended school. At 16, he entered the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, now Hampton University, in Virginia, a school intended to train black teachers.

Booker T. Washington later founded and served as president of what is now Tuskegee University, an academic and vocational school for blacks during Reconstruction. He was to become one of America's foremost educators of his time. He also recruited George Washington Carver to teach and conduct research at Tuskegee.

Active in politics, he was routinely consulted by Congressmen and Presidents about the appointment of blacks to political positions. He worked and socialized with many white politicians and notables. He argued that self-reliance was the key to improved conditions for blacks in the US. However, for his advice to blacks to "compromise" and accept segregation, other black activists of the time, such as W. E. B. DuBois, labeled him an "accomodator". It should be allowed, however, that despite not condemning Jim Crow publicly, Washington privately contributed funds for legal challenges against segregation.

Dr. Washington was instrumental in the creation of over 100 small schools for the education and betterment of Negroes in Virginia and other portions of the South, funded partly by his friend millionaire industrialist and philanthropist Henry Huttleston Rogers, who rose from poor beginnings to become a partner of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Trust.

Rogers was the builder of the Virginian Railway, completed in 1909. Although Rogers had died suddenly a few weeks earlier, as had been previously arranged, in JUne 1909, Dr. Washington went on a whistle stop speaking tour along the newly completed Virginian Railway. He rode in Rogers' personal railcar, the "Dixie", making speeches at many stops including Victoria and Roanoke in Virginia, and Princeton, in West Virginia.

His autobiography, Up from Slavery, published in 1901, was a bestseller. He was also the first African-American ever invited to the White House as the guest of a President--which led to a scandal for the inviting President, Theodore Roosevelt.

"Think about it: We went into slavery pagans; we came out Christians. We went into slavery pieces of property; we came out American citizens. We went into slavery with chains clanking about our wrists; we came out with the American ballot in our hands... Notwithstanding the cruelty and moral wrong of slavery, we are in a stronger and more hopeful condition, materially, intellectually, morally, and religiously, than is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of the globe." -- from Up From Slavery

For his contributions to American society, Booker T. Washington was granted honorary degrees from Harvard University and Dartmouth College and on April 5, 1956, the house where he was born was created a United States National Monument. Additionally, the first coin to feature an African-American was the Booker T. Washington Memorial Half Dollar that was minted by the U.S. Mint from 1946 to 1951. On April 7, 1940, Booker T. Washington became the first African American to be depicted on a United States postage stamp. His birthplace in Hardy, Virginia, is now a National Monument.

Writings

• "The Awakening of the Negro," The Atlantic Monthly, 78 (September, 1896).
• "The Case of the Negro," The Atlantic Monthly, 84 (November, 1899).
• Up from Slavery: An Autobiography (1901) - ISBN 0451527542

See also: Slave narrative

External links

• Up from Slavery, Project Gutenberg edition
• Up from Slavery, Electronic Edition
• "The Awakening of the Negro"
• "The Case of the Negro"
• "Booker T. Washington's 1909 Tour of Virginia on the newly completed Virginian Railway"
• "National Park Service Booker T. Washington Birthplace"

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