Booker T. Washington
Booker T. Washington
Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) was an American educator, author and orator who rose from slavery to become one of the most influential Black leaders of his time. Born enslaved in Virginia and freed as a child at the end of the Civil War, he worked in salt furnaces and coal mines in West Virginia while teaching himself to read. Determined to gain an education, he traveled hundreds of miles, much of it on foot, to enroll at Hampton Institute, where he worked as a janitor to pay his way. In 1881 he became the first leader of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, building it into a respected school where students learned trades, farming and teaching. He brought George Washington Carver to its faculty, wrote the autobiography Up from Slavery (1901), and with the philanthropist Julius Rosenwald helped launch the program that would build thousands of rural schools for Black children.
Latest UpdatesLIVE
From Abolition to Civil Rights
William Wilberforce led the campaign that abolished the British slave trade in 1807, and in America Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation while Harriet Tubman guided enslaved people to freedom. Booker T. Washington, born into slavery, built the Tuskegee Institute into a leading center of education. Mahatma Gandhi's method of nonviolent resistance later inspired Martin Luther King Jr. in the American civil rights movement.
2.5K followers
59 followers
