Booker T. Washington
Born April 5, 1856, in Franklin County, Virginia, Booker Taliaferro
Washington was the son of an unknown white man and Jane, an enslaved cook
of James Burroughs, a small planter.
Jane named her son Booker Taliaferro but later dropped the second
name. Booker gave himself the surname "Washington" when he first
enrolled in school. Sometime after Booker's birth, his mother was married
to Washington Ferguson, a slave. A daughter, Amanda, was born to this
marriage. James, Booker's younger half-brother, was adopted. Booker's
elder brother, John, was also the son of a white man.
Booker spent his first nine years as a slave on the Burroughs farm.
In 1865, his mother took her children to Malden, West Virginia, to join
her husband, who had gone there earlier and found work in the salt mines.
At age nine, Booker was put to work packing salt. Between the ages of ten
and twelve he worked in a coal mine. He attended school but continued to
work in the mines.
In 1871, he went to work as a houseboy for the wife of Gen. Lewis
Ruffner, owner of the mines. At age sixteen, Booker T. Washington
entered Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Virginia.
Washington traveled most of the distance from Malden to Hampton on
foot, arriving penniless. His entrance examination to Hampton was to clean
a room. The teacher inspected his work with a spotless, white
handkerchief. Booker was admitted. He was given work as a janitor to pay
the cost of his room and board, and Samuel Chapman Armstrong arranged for a white
benefactor to pay his tuition.
At Hampton, Washington studied academic subjects and agriculture,
which included work in the fields and pigsties. He also learned lessons in
personal cleanliness and good manners. His special interest was public
speaking and debate. He was jubilant when he was chosen to speak at his
commencement.
The most important part of his experience at Hampton was his
association with Armstrong, who he described in his autobiography as
"a great man - the noblest, rarest human being it has ever been my
privilege to meet." From Armstrong, Washington derived much of his
educational philosophy.
After graduating from Hampton with honors in 1875, Washington
returned to Malden to teach. For eight months he was a student at Wayland
Seminary, an institution with a curriculum that was entirely
academic. This experience reinforced his belief in an educational system
that emphasized practical skills and self-help. In 1879, Washington
returned to Hampton to teach in a program for American Indians.
In 1880, a bill that included a yearly appropriation of $2,000 was
passed by the Alabama State Legislature to establish a school for Blacks
in Macon County. This action was generated by two men - Lewis Adams, a
former slave, and George W. Campbell, a former slave owner. On February
12, 1881, Governor Rufus Willis Cobb signed the bill into law,
establishing the Tuskegee Normal School for the training of Black
teachers.
Armstrong was invited to recommend a White teacher as principal of
the school. Instead, he suggested Washington, who was accepted. When
Washington arrived at Tuskegee, he found that no land or buildings had
been acquired for the projected school, nor was there any money for these
purposes since the appropriation was for salaries only. Undaunted,
Washington began selling the idea of the school, recruiting students and
seeking support of local Whites.
The school opened July 4, 1881, in a shanty loaned by a Black
church, Butler A.M.E. Zion. With money borrowed from Hampton Institute's
treasurer, Washington purchased an abandoned 100-acre plantation on
the outskirts of Tuskegee. Students built a kiln, made bricks for
buildings and sold bricks to raise money. Within a few years, they built a
classroom building, a dining hall, a girl’s dormitory and a chapel.
By 1888, the 540-acre school had an enrollment of more than 400 and offered
training in such skilled trades as carpentry, cabinetmaking, printing,
shoemaking and tinsmithing. Boys also studied farming and dairying, while
girls learned such domestic skills as cooking and sewing.
Through their own labor, students supplied a large part of the
needs of the school. In the academic departments, Washington insisted that
efforts be made to relate the subject matter to the actual experiences of
the students. Strong emphasis was placed on personal hygiene, manners and
character building.
Students followed a rigid schedule of study and work, arising at
five in the morning and retiring at nine-thirty at night. Although
Tuskegee was non-denominational, all students were required to attend
chapel daily and a series of religious services on Sunday. Washington
himself usually spoke to the students on Sunday evening.
Olivia Davidson, a graduate of Hampton and Framingham State Normal
School in Massachusetts, became teacher and assistant principal at
Tuskegee in 1881. In 1885, Washington's older brother John, also a
Hampton graduate, came to Tuskegee to direct the vocational training
program.
Other notable additions to the staff were acclaimed scientist Dr.
George Washington Carver, who became director of the agriculture program
in 1896; Emmett J. Scott, who became Washington 's private secretary in
1897; and Monroe Nathan Work, who became head of the Records and Research
Department in 1908.
Washington, on Tuskegee's 25th anniversary, transformed
an idea into a 2,000-acre, eighty-three building campus that, combined
with such personal property as equipment, live stock and stock in trade, was valued
at $831,895. Tuskegee's endowment fund was $1,275,644 and training in
thirty-seven industries was available for the more than 1,500 students
enrolled that year.
Through progress at Tuskegee, Washington showed that an oppressed
people could advance. His concept of practical education was a
contribution to the general field of education. His writings, which
included 40 books, were widely read and highly regarded. Among his works
was an autobiography titled "Up From Slavery" (1901), "The
Man Farthest Down" (1912), "My Larger Education" (1911),
and "Character Building" (1902).
Washington settled into the national scene on opening day of the
Atlanta Exposition in 1895 when he spoke about "The New
Negro," one with "the knowledge of how to live ... how to
cultivate the soil, to husband their resources, and make the most of their
opportunities."
Eyebrows raised again on Oct. 16, 1901, when Washington
became the first Black person to dine at the White House. Counsel
to many U.S. presidents, he was there at the invitation of President
Theodore Roosevelt.
Washington was married three times. In 1882, he married his Malden
sweetheart, Fannie N. Smith. She died two years later, leaving an infant
daughter, Portia (who married William Sidney Pittman, an architect, in
1907).
In 1885, Washington married Olivia Davidson, the assistant
principal of Tuskegee, who died in 1889. Two sons were born to this
marriage: Booker Taliaferro, Jr. and Ernest Davidson. In 1893, Washington
was married to Fisk University graduate Margaret Murray, who had come to
Tuskegee as lady principal in 1889 and directed the programs for female
students and initiated the Women's Meetings.
Margaret and her husband's three children and four grandchildren survived
Washington, who died November 14, 1915, at age fifty-nine of
arteriosclerosis and exhaustion. He died after an illness in St.
Luke's hospital, New York City, where he had been admitted on November 5.
Aware that the end was near, he left with his wife and his physician, Dr.
John A. Kennedy, Sr., on November 12, so that he could die in Tuskegee.
Washington's November 17 funeral in the Tuskegee Institute
Chapel was attended by nearly 8,000 people. He was buried in a brick tomb,
made by students, on a hill commanding a view of the entire campus.
[Taken
from the web site of Tuskegee University]
