Progressive Era Project

Booker T. Washington –
His Stand Against Illiteracy and Under Education of Blacks

In his early years, Booker Taliaferro Washington spent his childhood as a slave, in Hale’s Ford, Virginia. When he turned nine, he began working in salt furnaces and coal mines to help support his family. B.T. Washington always wanted to receive a good education, but didn’t get that until the age of sixteen, when he walked 200 miles to attend school at the Hampton Institute of Virginia. After realizing what most of his fellow people were missing out on, he decided to become a teacher himself in order to spread education to places where there was no real system before. Next, he headed up the educational scale, so to speak, and eventually took his place as the head of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, which he himself founded. He was also an esteemed author and poet, and a [political] speaker; he was even asked to speak at the Cotton States Exposition, which was a great honor for a black man in 1895. After all of his accomplishments, even still some blacks viewed his actions as possibly agitating to the white population, but he had even won the hearts of the white community. During his time as head of the Institute, he traveled across the country to raise funds from not only blacks, but also whites, in order to provide the education he had so dreamed of. Also founded by B.T. Washington, the National Negro Business League helped rural extension in America. B.T. Washing never gave up, and finally succeeded in making his dream come to life; providing education for others. Having finally established a foothold in the education business, he was able to provide his well-earned education to any an all students willing to receive a proper education, whether they be of black descent, or white.




http://www.gale.cengage.com/free_resources/bhm/bio/washington_b.htm