Booker Taliaferro Washington



Booker Taliaferro Washington

1856. - 1915

Booker T. Washington was one of the most influential black men of his time. Washington was the dominant figure in the African-American community in the United States from 1890 to 1915, especially after his Atlanta Address of 1895. Representing the last generation of black leaders born into slavery, Washington was generally perceived as a credible proponent of education for freedmen in the post-Reconstruction, Jim Crow South. He is best known for his organizing and running of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (now Tuskegee University).

Booker was born in 1856 on the Burroughs tobacco farm in Virginia. His mother Jane was a cook, and his father a white man from a nearby farm, whom he knew little about. He went to school – not as a student, but to carry books for one of James Burroughs’s daughters. It was illegal to educate slaves. “I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study would be about the same as getting into paradise.” His family gained their freedom in 1865 with the end of the Civil War. In the summer of 65, when he was nine, he migrated with his brother John and his sister Amanda to Malden, West Virginia, to join his stepfather, Washington Ferguson. His mother enrolled him in an elementary school, where Booker took the last name of Washington because he found out that other children had more than one name. When the teacher called on him and asked for his name he answered, “Booker Washington.”

He worked with his mother as a salt-packer and in a coal mine. He was hired as a houseboy for Viola Ruffner, the wife of General Lewis Ruffner, who owned the salt-furnace and coal mine. Many other houseboys had failed to satisfy the demanding Mrs. Ruffner, but Booker’s diligence met her standards.

At age 16, he walked much of the 500 miles back to Virginia to enroll in a new school for black students, Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute. Here students with little income could work at the school to pay their way. The head teacher admitted him only after he had cleaned a room to her satisfaction.

From 1878 to 1879 Washington attended Wayland Seminary in Washington D.C., and returned to teach at Hampton. The president of Hampton recommended Washington to become the first principal at Tuskegee Institute, a similar school being founded in Alabama in 1881. At 25 years of age he began his school. Washington believed with a little self help, people may go from poverty to success. His students literally built their own school: constructing classrooms, barns and outbuildings; growing their own crops and raising livestock; and providing for most of their own basic necessities. Both men and women had to learn trades as well as academics. Washington helped raise funds to establish and operate hundreds of small community schools and institutions of higher education for blacks.

The institute illustrated Washington’s aspirations for his race. His theory was that by providing needed skills to society, African Americans would play their part, leading to acceptance by white Americans. He believed that blacks would eventually gain full participation in society by showing themselves to be responsible, reliable American citizens. He would head this school till the day he died.

Washington was married three times. Fannie Smith was his first wife and they were married in 1882. They had one child, Portia M. Washington. Fannie died in May 1884. Olivia A. Davidson was his second wife, and they were married in 1885. Before they were married she had taught in Mississippi and Tennessee, and taught at Tuskegee. Here she became the assistant principal. They had two sons, Booker T. Washington Jr. and Ernest Davidson Washington, before she died in 1889. Washington’s third marriage was in 1893 to Margaret James Murray. She was a graduate of Fisk University. They had no children, but she helped rear Washington’s children and outlived him by ten years.

Washington’s work on education issues helped him enlist both the moral and substantial financial support of many major white philanthropists. He was seen as a spokesperson for African Americans and became a conduit for funding educational programs. He became friends with such self-made men as Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, William Howard Taft, Julius Rosenwald, and Standard Oil magnate Henry Huttleston Rogers.

Rogers was a millionaire industrialist and financier, one of the richest men in the U.S. Around 1894 Rogers heard Washington speak at Madison Square Garden. The next day he contacted Washington and requested a meeting. This began a close relationship that was to extend over a period of 15 years. Washington revealed that Rogers had been quietly funding operations of 65 small country schools for African Americans, and had given substantial sums of money to support Tuskegee Institute and Hampton Institute. He also disclosed that Rogers had encouraged programs with matching funds requirements so the recipients would have a stake in knowing that they were helping themselves through their own hard work and sacrifice, and thereby enhance their self-esteem.

Anna T. Jeans in 1907 entrusted to Washington one million dollars to construct some elementary schools for Negro children in the South.

Julius Rosenwald was the son of an immigrant clothier. By 1908 he became part-owner and president of Sears, Roebuck and Company in Chicago. In 1912 Rosenwald was asked to serve on the Board of Directors of Tuskegee Institute, a position he held for the remainder of his life. Rosenwald endowed Tuskegee so that Washington could spend less time traveling to seek funding and devote more time towards management of the school. In 1912 he spent $4 million to help build 4,977 schools, 217 teachers’ homes, and 163 shop buildings in 883 counties in 15 states. He used a system of matching grants, and black communities raised more than $4.7 million to aid the construction. These schools became known as Rosenwald Schools. By 1932, the facilities could accommodate one third of all African American children in Southern U.S. schools.

In 1895 at the Atlanta Exhibition address, Washington gave his economic views on race relations. He felt that blacks and whites were economically interdependent, but socially separated. He felt this would be a long process and blacks should bide their time. He was supported by W.E.B. DuBois at the time, but years later the two had a falling out due to differences in direction over the remedy required to reverse disenfranchisement. He felt Washington was too accommodating to white interests.

Washington advocated “go slow” accommodationism. This required African-Americans to accept the sacrifice of political power, civil rights and higher education for the youth that existed in the current system. His belief was that African-Americans should “concentrate all their energies on industrial education, and accumulation of wealth, and the conciliation of the South.” Washington valued the “industrial” education, as it provided critical skills for the jobs then available to the majority of African-Americans at the time. It would be these skills that would lay the foundation for the creation of stability that the African-American community required in order to move forward. He believed that in the long term “blacks would eventually gain full participation in society by showing themselves to be responsible, reliable American citizens.” His approach advocated for an initial step toward equal rights, rather than full equality under the law. It would be this step that would provide the economic power to back up their demands for equality in the future. This action, over time, would provide the proof to a deeply prejudiced white America that they wee not in fact “naturally stupid and incompetent.”

While Washington was very popular with white men because he did not rock the boat…DuBois saw this go slow policy as wrong. One can not defend one’s rights without suffrage!

Washington authored four books during his lifetime:

The Story of My Life and Work (1900)

Up From Slavery (1901)

My Larger Education (1911)

The Man Farthest Down (1912)

When Washington’s autobiography, Up From Slavery was published in 1901, it became a bestseller and had a major impact on the African American community, its friends and allies. One of the results was a dinner invitation in 1901 by Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States.

James K. Vardaman, soon to be Governor of Mississippi, and Benjamin Tillman, U.S. Senator for South Carolina, indulged in racist personal attacks in response to the invitation. Vardaman described the White House as “so saturated with the odor of the nigger that the rats have taken refuge in the stable”, and declared “I am just as much opposed to Booker T. Washington as a voter as I am to the coconut-headed, chocolate-colored typical little coon who blacks my shoes every morning. Neither is fit to perform the supreme function of citizenship.” Tillman opined that “The action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that nigger will necessitate our killing a thousand niggers in the South before they will learn their place again.”

Despite his travels and widespread work, Washington remained as principal of Tuskegee. Washington’s health was deteriorating rapidly; he collapsed in New York City and was brought home to Tuskegee, where he died on November 14, 1915, at the age of 59. He was buried on the campus of Tuskegee University near the University Chapel.

Honors and Memorials:

For his contributions to American society, Washington was granted an honorary Master’s degree from Harvard University in 1896 and an honorary Doctorate from Dartmouth College in 1901.

Booker T. Washington in 1901 was the first African-American ever invited to the White House.

In 1842, the Liberty Ship Booker T. Washington was named in his honor, the first major oceangoing vessel to be named after an African American.

On April 7, 1940, Washington became the first African American to be depicted on a U.S. Postage stamp. The first coin to feature an African American was the Booker T. Washington Memorial Half Dollar that was minted by the U.S. from 1946 to 1951. He was also depicted on the U.S. half dollar from 1951-1954.

At the center of the campus at Tuskegee University, the Booker T. Washington Monument, called “Lifting the Veil,” was dedicated in 1922. The inscription at its base reads: “He lifted the veil of ignorance from his people and pointed the way to progress through education and industry.”

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