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Booker T. Washington

Booker Taliaferro Washington (April 5, 1856 – November 14, 1915) was an American educator, author, and orator. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the primary leader in the African-American community and of the contemporary Black elite.

Booker T. Washington

Booker Taliaferro Washington

(1856-04-05)April 5, 1856

November 14, 1915(1915-11-14) (aged 59)

Ernest Davidson Washington

Booker T. Washington Jr

Portia M. Washington Pittman

Born into slavery on April 5, 1856, in Hale's Ford, Virginia, Washington was freed when U.S. troops reached the area during the Civil War. As a young man, Booker T. Washington worked his way through Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute and attended college at Wayland Seminary. In 1881, he was named as the first leader of the new Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, an institute for black higher education. He expanded the college, enlisting students in construction of buildings. Work at the college was considered fundamental to students' larger education. He attained national prominence for his Atlanta Address of 1895, which attracted the attention of politicians and the public. Washington played a dominant role in black politics, winning wide support in the black community of the South and among more liberal whites. Washington wrote an autobiography, Up from Slavery, in 1901, which became a major text. In that year, he dined with Theodore Roosevelt at the White House, which was the first time a black person publicly met the president on equal terms. After an illness, he died in Tuskegee, Alabama on November 14, 1915.


Washington was a key proponent of African-American businesses and one of the founders of the National Negro Business League. Washington mobilized a nationwide coalition of middle-class blacks, church leaders, and white philanthropists and politicians, with the goal of building the community's economic strength and pride by focusing on self-help and education. Washington had the ear of the powerful in the America of his day, including presidents. He used the nineteenth-century American political system to manipulate the media, raise money, develop strategy, network, distribute funds, and reward a cadre of supporters. Because of his influential leadership, the timespan of his activity, from 1880 to 1915, has been called the Age of Booker T. Washington. Washington called for Black progress through education and entrepreneurship, rather than trying to challenge directly the Jim Crow segregation and the disenfranchisement of Black voters in the South. Furthermore, he supported racial uplift, but secretly also supported court challenges to segregation and to restrictions on voter registration. Black activists in the North, led by W. E. B. Du Bois, disagreed with him and opted to set up the NAACP to work for political change.


After his death in 1915, he came under heavy criticism for accommodating white supremacy, despite his claims that his long-term goal was to end the disenfranchisement of African Americans, the vast majority of whom still lived in the South. Decades after Washington's death in 1915, the civil rights movement of the 1950s took a more active and progressive approach, which was also based on new grassroots organizations based in the South. Washington's legacy has been controversial in the civil rights community. However, a revisionist view appeared in the late twentieth century that interpreted his actions positively.

Higher education

Washington worked in salt furnaces and coal mines in West Virginia for several years to earn money. He made his way east to Hampton Institute, a school established in Virginia to educate freedmen and their descendants, where he also worked to pay for his studies.[11] He later attended Wayland Seminary in Washington, D.C. in 1878.[11]

The Story of My Life and Work (1900)

(1901)

Up from Slavery

The Story of the Negro: The Rise of the Race from Slavery (2 vols., 1909)

My Larger Education (1911)

(1912)

The Man Farthest Down

Washington and his family's visit to the White House was dramatized as the subject of an opera, , by Scott Joplin, noted African-American composer. It was first produced in 1903.[93]

A Guest of Honor

In the anthology radio drama Destination Freedom recapped his life in "Up from Slavery", written by Richard Durham.[94]

1949

's 1975 novel Ragtime features a fictional version of Washington trying to negotiate the surrender of an African-American musician who is threatening to blow up the Pierpont Morgan Library. The role was played by Moses Gunn in the 1981 film adaptation.

E. L. Doctorow

Washington was portrayed by in the 2020 Netflix miniseries Self Made, based on the life of Madame C. J. Walker.

Roger Guenveur Smith

In the series The Gilded Age, Washington is portrayed by actor Michael Braugher.[95]

HBO

– 1899[96]

The Future of the American Negro

The Story of My Life and Work (1900)

[97]

Washington, Booker T.; ; Williams, Fannie Barrier (1900). MacBrady, John E. (ed.). A New Negro for a New Century: An Accurate and Up-to-Date Record of the Upward Struggles of the Negro Race. Chicago, IL: American Publishing House.

Wood, Norman B.

– 1901

Up from Slavery

– 1902

Character Building

– 1904, a sequel to Up From Slavery[98]

Working with the Hands

(editor) – 1905

Tuskegee & Its People

Frederick Douglass – 1906 [99][100]

Online

(with W. E. B. Du Bois) – 1907

The Negro in the South

– 1907

The Negro in Business

The Story of the Negro: The Rise of the Race from Slavery (1909)

[101]

My Larger Education (1911)

[102]

: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe – 1912

The Man Farthest Down

African American founding fathers of the United States

African-American literature

Booker T. Washington Junior College

Double-duty dollar

History of African-American education

List of civil rights leaders

List of things named after Booker T. Washington

Rosenwald School

Roscoe Simmons

Ralph Waldo Tyler

Booker T. Washington National Monument

at Tuskegee University

Dr. Booker Taliaferro Washington

from C-SPAN's American Writers: A Journey Through History

"Writings of B. Washington and Du Bois"

from the Library of Congress

Booker T. Washington: A Resource Guide

at the University of Maryland Libraries

Booker T. Washington Papers Editorial Project collection