Booker T. Washington was born on April 5, 1856.  Although his father was an unknown white man, he was born a slave because his mother was a black plantation cook.  As a child he brought water to the slaves working in the fields, but after the civil war he was freed a moved with his mother to West Virginia.

    When Booker was 16, he attended Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute which was established to educate former slaves.  He was able to earn his board by working as a janitor and he repeatedly swept and dusted a classroom for his admission test.  After his graduation, he later taught in Malden at a Hampton.  When commissioners asked the head of Hampton to send a principal for their new school, Booker T. Washington arrived in June of 1881.  His classes began in July with thirty students in a shanty donated by a black church.  A little later he borrowed money to buy a plantation and moved the school to that to that location.  This school would soon be known as Tuskegee Institute. 

    Tuskegee offered courses such as brick making, mattress making, and wagon building because Washington believed that blacks should concentrate on their farming skills and learning industrial trades.  Among his all-black staff included the famous agricultural scientist George Washington Carver. Although Tuskegee Institute was highly successful in winning influential white support,  harsh reality of discrimination prevented most Tuskegee Institute graduates from using their skills.  Washington's leadership was one of repeated setbacks for blacks.  More blacks lost their right to vote, anti-black violence increased, and segregation became more deeply-rooted.  One major breakthrough for black Americans was when the NAACP won its first major case that outlawed the 'grandfather clause' which was a constitutional device in the South used to disfranchise blacks.

    Washington became an adviser to United States presidents on racial issues and on the appointment of blacks to government positions. Blacks in the South were motivated by his self-help programs, but some  militant blacks in the North criticized his attitude toward racial segregation and discrimination.   They argued that higher education and political agitation would eventually win full civil rights.

    Washington received many honorary degrees from Harvard University and Dartmouth College.  His publications included 'Up from Slavery', his autobiography, and 'Frederick Douglass'. He was married three times and outlived his first two wives. Washington  died on November  14, 1915 and was the first black elected to the Hall of Fame in 1945. From 1895 until his death in 1915, Booker T. Washington was the nation's dominant black leader.

Booker T. Washington. Anti Essays. Retrieved January 8, 2007, from the World Wide Web: http://www.antiessays.com/free-essays/651.html

CREDIT: picture) Battey, C.M. "Booker T. Washington, Half-Length Portrait, Standing, Against White Background", Circa 1890 to 1917. The African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship, Library of Congress.