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Booker Taliaferro Washington was born on a farm near Hale's Ford in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Franklin County, Virginia, most likely on April 5, 1856. Washington spent the first eight years of his childhood as a slave. Following emancipation he moved with his mother, brother, and sister to join his stepfather, who had found employment in the saltworks in Malden, West Virginia. Emancipation did not significantly raise the economic wellbeing of the family. The young Washington alternated between working in the saltworks and attending school.

At the age of sixteen, Washington left home for Virginia to further his education at Hampton Institute, under the influence of General Samuel C. Armstrong and his theory of industrial education. Three years later he graduated as one of the school's top students and a protégé of General Armstrong. After a short stint as a schoolteacher in Malden, Washington returned to Hampton as a member of the faculty and for additional education. In May 1881, Armstrong arranged for his prize student to be named principal of a recently authorized Alabama state normal and industrial school for black students.

When Washington arrived in Tuskegee, he discovered that the school existed only on paper. Despite his youth and inexperience he managed to create the school--acquiring land, erecting the buildings, and recruiting the faculty. More impressively, he mastered the political, administrative, and financial skills that he needed to form a black institution in the inhospitable hills of northern Alabama. By the early 1890s Tuskegee Institute was a success, and Washington was beginning to address the broader political and economic issues that confronted African Americans.

In 1895 Washington was asked to speak at the opening ceremonies of the Atlanta Exposition. This speech was a phenomenal success and transformed Washington from a southern educator to the most influential and powerful African American in the United States. He consulted with presidents and corporate leaders and headed a political machine that dispersed funds and political patronage throughout the black community. In 1901 his status brought him an invitation to lunch at the White House with President Theodore Roosevelt.

Washington confronted the task of devising a strategy for blacks to successfully move from slavery to citizenship, a process made more difficult by the rise in racism, discrimination, and violence characterizing the beginning of the twentieth century. Washington's strategy addressed the needs of the vast majority of African Americans who resided in the South. It focused on education, self-reliance, hard work, and economic success. While his critics accused him of accepting discrimination and white supremacy, Washington consistently spoke out against segregation, lynching, and the restrictions placed on black suffrage. Nevertheless, in the early twentieth century W. E. B. Du Bois and other African American leaders, especially in the North, became increasingly dissatisfied with Washington's program and his political power. The Niagara Movement founded in 1905 and, later, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) founded in 1909 challenged his leadership. Still, at the time of his death in November 1915, Washington was still the most widely known and respected African American leader in the United States.

References:

1. Brundage, W. Fitzhugh, ed. Booker T. Washington and Black Progress: Up from Slavery 100 Years Later. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2003.

2. Harlan, Louis R. Booker T. Washington: The Making of a Black Leader, 1856-1901. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972.

3. Harlan, Louis R. Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901-1915. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983.

4. Meier, August. Negro Thought in America, 1880-1915. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1988.

5. Moore, Jacqueline H. Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, and the Struggle for Racial Uplift. Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 2003.

6. Norrell, Robert J. Up from History: The Life of Booker T. Washington. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 2009.

7. West, Michael Rudolph. The Education of Booker T. Washington: American Democracy and the Idea of Race Relations. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.

8. Wolters, Raymond. Du Bois and His Rivals. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002.

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