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Booker Taliaferro Washington – Political leader in the African American community and contemporary black elite.

Booker T. WashingtonĀ (š›šØš«š§ April 5, 1856, Franklin county,Ā Virginia, U.S.ā€”died November 14, 1915,Ā Tuskegee,Ā Alabama) was an educator and reformer, the first president and principal developer of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (nowĀ Tuskegee University), and the most influential spokesman forĀ Black AmericansĀ between 1895 and 1915.

He was š›šØš«š§ in a slave hut but, after emancipation, moved with his family to Malden,Ā West Virginia.Ā DireĀ poverty ruled out regular schooling; at age nine he began working, first in a salt furnace and later in a coal mine. Determined to get anĀ education, he enrolled at theĀ Hampton Normal and Agricultural InstituteĀ (now Hampton University) in Virginia (1872), working as a janitor to help pay expenses. He graduated in 1875 and returned to Malden, where for two years he taught š˜¤š˜©š˜Ŗš˜­š˜„ren in a day school and adults at night. Following studies at Wayland Seminary, Washington,Ā D.C.Ā (1878ā€“79), he joined the staff of Hampton.

Booker T. Washington, Andrew Carnegie, and othersBooker T. Washington (front row, centre left), with Andrew Carnegie and other sponsors of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (later Tuskegee University), Alabama, 1903.

In 1881 Washington was selected to head a newly establishedĀ normal schoolĀ for African Americans at Tuskegee, an institution with two small converted buildings, no equipment, and very little money.Ā Tuskegee Normal and Industrial InstituteĀ became a monument to his lifeā€™s work. At his death 34 years later, it had more than 100 well-equipped buildings, some 1,500 students, a faculty of nearly 200 teaching 38 trades and professions, and an endowment of approximately $2 million.

Washington believed that the best interests of Black people in the post-ReconstructionĀ era could be realized through education in the crafts and industrial sš“€š’¾š“š“s and the cultivation of the virtues of patience, enterprise, and thrift. He urged his fellow Blacks, most of whom were impoverished and illiterate farm labourers, to temporarily abandon their efforts to win fullĀ civil rightsĀ and political power and instead toĀ cultivateĀ their industrial and farming sš“€š’¾š“š“s so as to attain economic security. Blacks would thus accept segregation andĀ discrimination, but their eventual acquisition of wealth andĀ cultureĀ would gradually win for them the respect and acceptance of the whiteĀ community. This would break down the divisions between the two races and lead to equal citizenship for Blacks in the end. In his epochal speech (September 18, 1895) to a racially mixed audience at the Atlanta Exposition, Washington summed up hisĀ pragmaticĀ approach in the famous phrase:

In all things that are purely social we can be separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.

Explore the career of educator and reformer Booker T. WashingtonLearn about the life of Booker T. Washington, a prominent American educator and reformer.See all videos for this article

TheseĀ sentimentsĀ were called theĀ Atlanta CompromiseĀ by such critics as the BlackĀ intellectualĀ W.E.B. Du Bois, who deplored Washingtonā€™s emphasis on vocational sš“€š’¾š“š“s to the detriment of academic development and civil rights. And indeed it is true that, during the period of Washingtonā€™s ascendancy as national spokesman for African Americans, his race was systematically excluded both from the franchise and from any effective participation in national political life, and rigid patterns of segregation and discrimination became institutionalized in the Southern states. Even Washingtonā€™s visit to theĀ White HouseĀ in 1901 was greeted with a storm of protest as a ā€œbreach of racial etiquette.ā€

Booker T. WashingtonAmerican reformer Booker T. Washington, 1903.

Most Blacks felt comfortable with Washingtonā€™s approach, however, and his influence among whites was such that he became an unofficialĀ arbiterĀ determining which Black individuals and institutions were deemed worthy to benefit from government patronage and white philanthropic support. He went on to receive honorary degrees fromĀ Harvard UniversityĀ (1896) andĀ Dartmouth CollegeĀ (1901). Among his dozen books is his autobiography,Ā Up from SlaveryĀ (1901), translated into many languages.

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