Washington was known as one of the most influential African Americans of his time. He was born a slave on April 5, 1856 of an unknown white man and a slave mother. He attended school briefly, but mainly worked as a young boy. He entered Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Virginia where he showed a special interest in public speaking and debate. In 1881 he went to Tuskegee, Alabama to work as a principal for a new Negro teacher's school that received no funding for buildings by the Alabama Legislature. Washington started the school in a shanty owned by a black church and then purchased a plantation with funds loaned by the Hampton Institute. By 1888 the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute had more than 400 students. One of his main problems was finding money to run the institution. To raise money for the institute, Washington went on speaking tours publicizing the school where he would soon become an influential public figure.
As a persuasive speaker, he developed a national reputation as a reasonable person of his race. His non-threatening racial views gave Washington the title as "The Great Accommodator". He received money from white northerners such as Andrew Carnagie, John D. Rockefeller, Collins P. Huntington, and Robert C. Ogden. William H. Baldwin also served on the school's board. They were impressed with his works and his non-threatening racial views. He believed that blacks should not push to attain equal civil and political rights with whites. It was best to improve their economic skills and the equality of their character. Improvement rested mainly on the shoulders of the black man. They would eventually earn the respect of the white man. These ideas were very popular with a lot of whites. His address in 1895 at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Ga. made him nationally known. The speech, known as the "Atlanta Compromise", summarized his views on the race question and was well received by whites in the North and in the South.
Booker T. Washington: "An All American Educator" There are people whose abilities, determination and energy take them far past any limitations life tries to place on them. Booker T. Washington was one of those people. He overcame a childhood of slavery and illiteracy to become the most prominent e...
To serve the cause of human freedom, a person has to be brave, a leader, patient and unselfish. Throughout history many people have fought for what they believed in to gain freedom for their people. One man who did this is Booker T. Washington. Washington was an African American advocate who wan...
Booker T. Washington was born in Virginia in 1856. Even though he was born into slavery, he received a teaching degree from a freedman's school in Hampton, Virginia. In 1881 he founded what is now known as Tuskegee University. Booker T. Washington's major focus was to educate African Americans in ag...
Booker T. Washington Booker Taliaferro Washington was born on April 5,1856 in Franklin County, Virginia. ... Booker had been blessed with an intact family, with one exception of having a white father who never contributed to his life and whose identity Washington never acknowledged. ... Booker T. ... Having a first hand struggle with freedom, social change was a ground floor philosophy to Booker. ...
Booker T. Washington The end of the Civil War brought a time known as the Reconstruction. During this time, the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery. The newly freed slaves needed jobs, housing, and education in order to enter society, but the rejection of th...
Booker T. Washington was born a slave on a tobacco farm in Hales Ford, Virginia on April 5, 1856. Booker T. was a great public speaker who mainly spoke about blacks earning the white man's respect rather than keep fighting for freedom. W.E.B. DuBois on the other hand was born in Great Barrington, M...
The Distinctly Different Viewpoints of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. ... Two of these forward-looking men were Booker T. ... Despite this, Booker T. ... Rather, it would take much time and hard work to gain the respect of whites and complete equality, both socially and economically, for all.23 As the foremost champion of black education and equality, Booker T. ...
Parallel to the disagreements of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X during the civil rights movements of the 1960's, African American leaders W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington had different strategies to move towards African American progress. Du Bois illustrates his disagreements towards Wa...
As the nineteenth century approached, America was facing many problems: political, economic, and, arguably the most critical - social. Even after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, African Americans struggled to end the racial division that had conquered the United States for centuries. Two men ...
