Washington, Booker T. 1856-1915

AFRICAN AMERICAN POLITICAL LEADER AND EDUCATOR

Up from Slavery.

Booker T. Washington was the most influential African American political, social, and educational leader of the 1900s . As head of the Tuskegee Institute and founder of the National Negro Business League he shaped an accommodationist strategy to cope with segregation and discrimination and became the center of a fierce debate among black leaders and intellectuals. He was born the son of a slave woman and a white father, whose identity he never learned, on a small farm in western Virginia in 1856. As a child Washington, who was taught the virtues of frugality, cleanliness, and personal morality, worked in a salt furnace and as a houseboy for a white family. In 1872 he entered Hampton Institute, graduating in 1875. There he formed one of the central ideas of his life: if African Americans were to be accorded equality and respect by whites, they would have...

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