Booker T.

Washington

Booker Taliaferro Washington (April 18,

1856 – November 14, 1915) was an American
Booker T. Washington
educator, author, orator, and adviser to multiple
presidents of the United States. Between 1890
and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader
in the African American community and of the
contemporary black elite.[1] Washington was
from the last generation of black American
leaders born into slavery and became the
leading voice of the former slaves and their
descendants. They were newly oppressed in the
South by disenfranchisement and the Jim Crow
discriminatory laws enacted in the post-
Reconstruction Southern states in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries.

Washington was a key proponent of African-

American businesses and one of the founders of
the National Negro Business League. His base Booker T. Washington in 1905
was the Tuskegee Institute, a historically black
college he founded in Tuskegee, Alabama. As Born Booker Taliaferro
lynchings in the South reached a peak in 1895, Washington
Washington gave a speech, known as the April 18, 1856
"Atlanta compromise", which brought him Hale's Ford, Virginia, U.S.
national fame. He called for black progress Died November 14, 1915
through education and entrepreneurship,
(aged 59)
rather than trying to challenge directly the Jim
Crow segregation and the disenfranchisement Tuskegee, Alabama, U.S.
of black voters in the South. Resting Tuskegee University
place
Washington mobilized a nationwide coalition of
middle-class blacks, church leaders, and white Alma mater Hampton Normal and
philanthropists and politicians, with a long- Agricultural Institute
term goal of building the community's Wayland Seminary
economic strength and pride by a focus on self- Occupation Educator, author, and
help and schooling. With his own contributions African American civil
to the black community, Washington was a
rights leader
supporter of racial uplift, but secretly he also
supported court challenges to segregation and Political Republican
restrictions on voter registration.[2] party
Spouse(s) Fannie N. Smith
Black activists in the North, led by W. E. B. Du
(1882–1884, her death)
Bois, at first supported the Atlanta
compromise, but later disagreed and opted to Olivia A. Davidson
set up the National Association for the (1886–1889, her death)

Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to

work for political change. They tried with Margaret Murray
limited success to challenge Washington's (1893–1915, his death)
political machine for leadership in the black
Children 3
community, but built wider networks among
white allies in the North.[3] Decades after Signature
Washington's death in 1915, the civil rights
movement of the 1950s took a more active and
progressive approach, which was also based on new grassroots organizations based
in the South, such as Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Southern Christian Leadership Conference
(SCLC).

Washington mastered the nuances of the political arena in the late 19th century,
which enabled him to manipulate the media, raise money, develop strategy, network,
push, reward friends, and distribute funds, while punishing those who opposed his
plans for uplifting blacks. His long-term goal was to end the disenfranchisement of
the vast majority of African Americans, who then still lived in the South.[4] His legacy
has been very controversial to the civil rights community, of which he was an
important leader before 1915. After his death, he came under heavy criticism for
accommodationism to white supremacy. However since the late 20th century, a more
balanced view of his very wide range of activities has appeared. As of 2010, the most
recent studies, "defend and celebrate his accomplishments, legacy, and
leadership".[5]

Contents
Overview
Early life
Higher education
Tuskegee Institute
Later career
Marriages and children
Politics and the Atlanta compromise
Wealthy friends and benefactors
Henry Huttleston Rogers
Anna T. Jeanes
Julius Rosenwald
Up from Slavery to the White House
Death
Honors and memorials
Legacy
Descendants
Representation in other media
Works
See also
References
Primary sources
Further reading
Historiography
External links

Overview
In 1856, Washington was born into slavery in Virginia as the son of Jane, an African-
American slave.[6] After emancipation, she moved the family to West Virginia to join
her husband Washington Ferguson. West Virginia had seceded from Virginia and
joined the Union as a free state during the Civil War. As a young man, Booker T.
Washington worked his way through Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (a
historically black college, now Hampton University) and attended college at Wayland
Seminary (now Virginia Union University).[7]

In 1881, the young Washington was named as the first leader of the new Tuskegee
Institute in Alabama, founded for the higher education of blacks. He developed the
college from the ground up, enlisting students in construction of buildings, from
classrooms to dormitories. Work at the college was considered fundamental to
students' larger education. They maintained a large farm to be essentially self-
supporting, rearing animals and cultivating needed produce. Washington continued
to expand the school. He attained national prominence for his Atlanta Address of
1895, which attracted the attention of politicians and the public. He became a
popular spokesperson for African-American citizens. He built a nationwide network
of supporters in many black communities, with black ministers, educators, and
businessmen composing his core supporters. Washington played a dominant role in
black politics, winning wide support in the black community of the South and among
more liberal whites (especially rich Northern whites). He gained access to top
national leaders in politics, philanthropy and education. Washington's efforts
included cooperating with white people and enlisting the support of wealthy
philanthropists. Washington had asserted that the surest way for blacks to gain equal
social rights was to demonstrate "industry, thrift, intelligence and property".[8]

Beginning in 1912, he built a relationship with philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, the

owner of Sears Roebuck, who served on the board of trustees for the rest of his life
and made substantial donations to Tuskegee. In addition, they collaborated on a pilot
program for Tuskegee architects to design six model schools that could be built for
African-American students in rural areas of the South. These were historically
underfunded by the state and local governments. Given their success in 1913 and
1914, Rosenwald established the Rosenwald Foundation in 1917 to support the
schools effort. It expanded improving or providing rural schools by giving matching
funds to communities that committed to operate the schools and provided funds for
construction and maintenance, with cooperation of white public school boards
required. Nearly 5,000 new, small rural schools were built to improve education for
blacks throughout the South, most after Washington's death in 1915.[9]
Northern critics called Washington's widespread and powerful organization the
"Tuskegee Machine". After 1909, Washington was criticized by the leaders of the
new NAACP, especially W. E. B. Du Bois, who demanded a stronger tone of protest in
order to advance the civil rights agenda. Washington replied that confrontation
would lead to disaster for the outnumbered blacks in society, and that cooperation
with supportive whites was the only way to overcome pervasive racism in the long
run. At the same time, he secretly funded litigation for civil rights cases, such as
challenges to Southern constitutions and laws that had disenfranchised blacks across
the South since the turn of the century.[10][11] African Americans were still strongly
affiliated with the Republican Party, and Washington was on close terms with
national Republican Party leaders. He was often asked for political advice by
presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft.[12]

In addition to his contributions in education, Washington wrote 14 books; his

autobiography, Up from Slavery, first published in 1901, is still widely read today.
During a difficult period of transition, he did much to improve the working
relationship between the races. His work greatly helped blacks to achieve education,
financial power, and understanding of the U.S. legal system. This contributed to
blacks' attaining the skills to create and support the civil rights movement, leading to
the passage in the later 20th century of important federal civil rights laws.[13]

Early life
Booker was born into slavery to Jane, an enslaved African-
American woman on the plantation of James Burroughs in
southwest Virginia, near Hale's Ford in Franklin County. He
never knew the day, month, and year of his birth,[14] but the
year on his headstone reads 1856.[15] Nor did he ever know
his father, said to be a white man who resided on a
neighboring plantation. The man played no financial or
emotional role in Washington's life.[16]

From his earliest years, Washington was known simply as

"Booker", with no middle or surname, in the practice of the
time.[17] His mother, her relatives and his siblings struggled
with the demands of slavery. He later wrote: Washington early in his
career

I cannot recall a single instance during my

childhood or early boyhood when our entire
family sat down to the table together, and God's
blessing was asked, and the family ate a meal in a
civilized manner. On the plantation in Virginia,
and even later, meals were gotten to the children
very much as dumb animals get theirs. It was a
piece of bread here and a scrap of meat there. It
was a cup of milk at one time and some potatoes
at another.[18]
When he was nine, Booker and his family in Virginia gained freedom under the
Emancipation Proclamation as US troops occupied their region. Booker was thrilled
by the formal day of their emancipation in early 1865:

As the great day drew nearer, there was more singing in the slave quarters
than usual. It was bolder, had more ring, and lasted later into the night.
Most of the verses of the plantation songs had some reference to
freedom... Some man who seemed to be a stranger (a United States officer,
I presume) made a little speech and then read a rather long paper—the
Emancipation Proclamation, I think. After the reading we were told that we
were all free, and could go when and where we pleased. My mother, who
was standing by my side, leaned over and kissed her children, while tears
of joy ran down her cheeks. She explained to us what it all meant, that this
was the day for which she had been so long praying, but fearing that she
would never live to see.[19]

After emancipation Jane took her family to the free state of West Virginia to join her
husband Washington Ferguson, who had escaped from slavery during the war and
settled there. The illiterate boy Booker began to painstakingly teach himself to read
and attended school for the first time.[20]

At school, Booker was asked for a surname for registration. He took the family name
of Washington, after his stepfather.[17] Still later he learned from his mother that she
had originally given him the name "Booker Taliaferro" at the time of his birth, but his
second name was not used by the master.[21] Upon learning of his original name,
Washington immediately readopted it as his own, and became known as Booker
Taliaferro Washington for the rest of his life.[21]

Higher education
Washington worked in salt furnaces and coal mines in West Virginia for several years
to earn money. He made his way east to Hampton Institute, a school established in
Virginia to educate freedmen and their descendants, where he also worked to pay for
his studies.[22] He later attended Wayland Seminary in Washington, D.C. in 1878.[22]

Tuskegee Institute
In 1881, the Hampton Institute president Samuel C. Armstrong recommended
Washington, then age 25, to become the first leader of Tuskegee Normal and
Industrial Institute (later Tuskegee Institute, now Tuskegee University), the new
normal school (teachers' college) in Alabama. The new school opened on July 4,
1881, initially using a room donated by Butler Chapel A.M.E. Zion Church.[23]

The next year, Washington purchased a former plantation to be developed as the

permanent site of the campus. Under his direction, his students literally built their
own school: making bricks, constructing classrooms, barns and outbuildings; and
growing their own crops and raising livestock; both for learning and to provide for
most of the basic necessities.[24] Both men and women had to learn trades as well as
academics. The Tuskegee faculty used all the activities to teach the students basic
skills to take back to their mostly rural black
communities throughout the South. The main goal
was not to produce farmers and tradesmen, but
teachers of farming and trades who could teach in the
new lower schools and colleges for blacks across the
South. The school expanded over the decades, adding
programs and departments, to become the present-
day Tuskegee University.[25]

The Oaks, "a large comfortable home," was built on

The Oaks – Booker T.
campus for Washington and his family.[26] They moved
Washington's house at
into the house in 1900. Washington lived there until Tuskegee University
his death in 1915. His widow, Margaret, lived at The
Oaks until her death in 1925.[27]

Later career
Washington led Tuskegee for more than 30 years
after becoming its leader. As he developed it, adding
to both the curriculum and the facilities on the
campus, he became a prominent national leader
among African Americans, with considerable
influence with wealthy white philanthropists and
politicians.[28] A history class conducted at the
Tuskegee Institute in 1902
Washington expressed his vision for his race through
the school. He believed that by providing needed
skills to society, African Americans would play their part, leading to acceptance by
white Americans. He believed that blacks would eventually gain full participation in
society by acting as responsible, reliable American citizens. Shortly after the
Spanish–American War, President William McKinley and most of his cabinet visited
Booker Washington. By his death in 1915, Tuskegee had grown to encompass more
than 100 well-equipped buildings, roughly 1,500 students, 200 faculty members
teaching 38 trades and professions, and an endowment of approximately $2
million.[29]

Washington helped develop other schools and colleges. In 1891 he lobbied the West
Virginia legislature to locate the newly-authorized West Virginia Colored Institute
(today West Virginia State University) in the Kanawha Valley of West Virginia near
Charleston. He visited the campus often and spoke at its first commencement
exercise.[30]

Washington was a dominant figure of the African-American community, then still

overwhelmingly based in the South, from 1890 to his death in 1915. His Atlanta
Address of 1895 received national attention. He was considered as a popular
spokesman for African-American citizens. Representing the last generation of black
leaders born into slavery, Washington was generally perceived as a supporter of
education for freedmen and their descendants in the post-Reconstruction, Jim Crow-
era South. He stressed basic education and training in manual and domestic labor
trades because he thought these represented the skills needed in what was still a
rural economy.
Throughout the final twenty years of his life, he maintained his standing through a
nationwide network of supporters including black educators, ministers, editors, and
businessmen, especially those who supported his views on social and educational
issues for blacks. He also gained access to top national white leaders in politics,
philanthropy and education, raised large sums, was consulted on race issues, and
was awarded honorary degrees from Harvard University in 1896 and Dartmouth
College in 1901.[29]

Late in his career, Washington was criticized by civil rights leader and NAACP
founder W. E. B. Du Bois. Du Bois and his supporters opposed the Atlanta Address as
the "Atlanta Compromise", because it suggested that African Americans should work
for, and submit to, white political rule. Du Bois insisted on full civil rights, due
process of law, and increased political representation for African Americans which,
he believed, could only be achieved through activism and higher education for
African-Americans. He believed that "the talented Tenth" would lead the race. Du
Bois labeled Washington, "the Great Accommodator". Washington responded that
confrontation could lead to disaster for the outnumbered blacks, and that
cooperation with supportive whites was the only way to overcome racism in the long
run.

While promoting moderation, Washington contributed secretly and substantially to

mounting legal challenges activist African Americans launched against segregation
and disenfranchisement of blacks.[11] In his public role, he believed he could achieve
more by skillful accommodation to the social realities of the age of segregation.[31]

Washington's work on education helped him enlist both the moral and substantial
financial support of many major white philanthropists. He became a friend of such
self-made men as Standard Oil magnate Henry Huttleston Rogers; Sears, Roebuck
and Company President Julius Rosenwald; and George Eastman, inventor of roll film,
founder of Eastman Kodak, and developer of a major part of the photography
industry. These individuals and many other wealthy men and women funded his
causes, including Hampton and Tuskegee institutes.

He also gave lectures to raise money for the school. On January 23, 1906, he lectured
at Carnegie Hall in New York in the Tuskegee Institute Silver Anniversary Lecture.
He spoke along with great orators of the day, including Mark Twain, Joseph Hodges
Choate, and Robert Curtis Ogden; it was the start of a capital campaign to raise
$1,800,000 for the school.[32]

The schools which Washington supported were founded primarily to produce

teachers, as education was critical for the black community following emancipation.
Freedmen strongly supported literacy and education as the keys to their future.
When graduates returned to their largely impoverished rural southern communities,
they still found few schools and educational resources, as the white-dominated state
legislatures consistently underfunded black schools in their segregated system.

To address those needs, in the 20th century Washington enlisted his philanthropic
network to create matching funds programs to stimulate construction of numerous
rural public schools for black children in the South. Working especially with Julius
Rosenwald from Chicago, Washington had Tuskegee architects develop model school
designs. The Rosenwald Fund helped support the construction and operation of more
than 5,000 schools and related resources for the education of blacks throughout the
South in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The local schools were a source of
communal pride; African-American families gave labor, land and money to them, to
give their children more chances in an environment of poverty and segregation. A
major part of Washington's legacy, the model rural schools continued to be
constructed into the 1930s, with matching funds for communities from the
Rosenwald Fund.[33]

Washington also contributed to the Progressive Era by forming the National Negro
Business League. It encouraged entrepreneurship among black businessmen,
establishing a national network.[33]

His autobiography, Up from Slavery, first published in 1901,[34] is still widely read in
the early 21st century.

Marriages and children

Washington was married three times. In his autobiography
Up from Slavery, he gave all three of his wives credit for
their contributions at Tuskegee. His first wife Fannie N.
Smith was from Malden, West Virginia, the same Kanawha
River Valley town where Washington had lived from age
nine to sixteen. He maintained ties there all his life, and
Smith was a student of his when he taught in Malden. He
helped her gain entrance into the Hampton Institute.
Washington and Smith were married in the summer of
1882, a year after he became principal there. They had one
child, Portia M. Washington, born in 1883. Fannie died in
May 1884.[25] Booker T. Washington
with his third wife
In 1885 the widower Washington married again, to Olivia A. Margaret and two sons,
Davidson (1854–1889). Born free in Virginia to a free Ernest, left and Booker
woman of color and a father who had been freed from T., Jr., right
slavery, she moved with her family to the free state of Ohio,
where she attended common schools. Davidson later
studied at Hampton Institute and went North to study at the Massachusetts State
Normal School at Framingham. She taught in Mississippi and Tennessee before
going to Tuskegee to work as a teacher. Washington recruited Davidson to Tuskegee,
and promoted her to vice-principal. They had two sons, Booker T. Washington Jr. and
Ernest Davidson Washington, before she died in 1889.

In 1893 Washington married Margaret James Murray. She was from Mississippi and
had graduated from Fisk University, a historically black college. They had no
children together, but she helped rear Washington's three children. Murray outlived
Washington and died in 1925.

Politics and the Atlanta compromise

Washington's 1895 Atlanta Exposition address was viewed as a "revolutionary
moment"[35] by both African Americans and whites across the country. At the time W.
E. B. Du Bois supported him, but they grew apart as Du Bois sought more action to
remedy disfranchisement and improve educational opportunities for blacks. After
their falling out, Du Bois and his supporters referred to Washington's speech as the
"Atlanta Compromise" to express their criticism that
Washington was too accommodating to white interests.

Washington advocated a "go slow" approach to avoid a

harsh white backlash.[35] He has been criticized for
encouraging many youths in the South to accept sacrifices
of potential political power, civil rights, and higher
education.[36] Washington believed that African Americans
should "concentrate all their energies on industrial
education, and accumulation of wealth, and the conciliation
of the South".[37] He valued the "industrial" education, as it
provided critical skills for the jobs then available to the
Washington circa 1895,
majority of African Americans at the time, as most lived in
by Frances Benjamin
the South, which was overwhelmingly rural and
Johnston
agricultural. He thought these skills would lay the
foundation for the creation of stability that the African-
American community required in order to move forward. He
believed that in the long term, "blacks would eventually gain full participation in
society by showing themselves to be responsible, reliable American citizens". His
approach advocated for an initial step toward equal rights, rather than full equality
under the law, gaining economic power to back up black demands for political
equality in the future.[38] He believed that such achievements would prove to the
deeply prejudiced white America that African Americans were not "'naturally' stupid
and incompetent".[39]

Well-educated blacks in the North lived in a different

society and advocated a different approach, in part due to
their perception of wider opportunities. Du Bois wanted
blacks to have the same "classical" liberal arts education as
upper-class whites did,[40] along with voting rights and civic
equality. The latter two had been ostensibly granted since
1870 by constitutional amendments after the Civil War. He
believed that an elite, which he called the Talented Tenth,
would advance to lead the race to a wider variety of
occupations.[41] Du Bois and Washington were divided in
part by differences in treatment of African Americans in the Washington giving a
North versus the South; although both groups suffered speech at Carnegie Hall
discrimination, the mass of blacks in the South were far in New York City, 1909
more constrained by legal segregation and
disenfranchisement, which totally excluded most from the
political process and system. Many in the North objected to being 'led', and
authoritatively spoken for, by a Southern accommodationist strategy which they
considered to have been "imposed on them [Southern blacks] primarily by Southern
whites".[42]

Historian Clarence Earl Walker wrote that, for white Southerners,

Free black people were 'matter out of place'. Their emancipation was an
affront to southern white freedom. Booker T. Washington did not
understand that his program was perceived as subversive of a natural
order in which black people were to remain forever subordinate or
unfree.[43]
Both Washington and Du Bois sought to define the best means post-Civil War to
improve the conditions of the African-American community through education.

Blacks were solidly Republican in this period, having gained emancipation and
suffrage with the President Lincoln and his party. Fellow Republican President
Ulysses S. Grant defended African Americans' newly won freedom and civil rights in
the South by passing laws and using federal force to suppress the Ku Klux Klan,
which had committed violence against blacks for years to suppress voting and
discourage education. After Federal troops left in 1877 at the end of the
Reconstruction era, many paramilitary groups worked to suppress black voting by
violence. From 1890–1908 Southern states disenfranchised most blacks and many
poor whites through constitutional amendments and statutes that created barriers to
voter registration and voting. Such devices as poll taxes and subjective literacy tests
sharply reduced the number of blacks in voting rolls. By the late nineteenth century,
Southern white Democrats defeated some biracial Populist-Republican coalitions and
regained power in the state legislatures of the former Confederacy; they passed laws
establishing racial segregation and Jim Crow. In the border states and North, blacks
continued to exercise the vote; the well-established Maryland African-American
community defeated attempts there to disfranchise them.

Washington worked and socialized with many national white politicians and industry
leaders. He developed the ability to persuade wealthy whites, many of them self-
made men, to donate money to black causes by appealing to their values. He argued
that the surest way for blacks to gain equal social rights was to demonstrate
"industry, thrift, intelligence and property".[44] He believed these were key to
improved conditions for African Americans in the United States. Because African
Americans had recently been emancipated and most lived in a hostile environment,
Washington believed they could not expect too much at once. He said, "I have
learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has
reached in life as by the obstacles which he has had to overcome while trying to
succeed."[25]

Along with Du Bois, Washington partly organized the "Negro exhibition" at the 1900
Exposition Universelle in Paris, where photos of Hampton Institute's black students
were displayed. These were taken by his friend Frances Benjamin Johnston.[45] The
exhibition demonstrated African Americans' positive contributions to United States'
society.[45]

Washington privately contributed substantial funds for legal challenges to

segregation and disfranchisement, such as the case of Giles v. Harris, which was
heard before the United States Supreme Court in 1903.[46] Even when such
challenges were won at the Supreme Court, southern states quickly responded with
new laws to accomplish the same ends, for instance, adding "grandfather clauses"
that covered whites and not blacks in order to prevent blacks from voting.

Wealthy friends and benefactors

State and local governments historically underfunded black schools, although they
were ostensibly providing "separate but equal" segregated facilities. White
philanthropists strongly supported education financially. Washington encouraged
them and directed millions of their money to projects
all across the South that Washington thought best
reflected his self-help philosophy. Washington
associated with the richest and most powerful
businessmen and politicians of the era. He was seen
as a spokesperson for African Americans and became
a conduit for funding educational programs.
Washington's wealthy friends
His contacts included such diverse and well-known
included Andrew Carnegie and
entrepreneurs and philanthropists as Andrew Robert Curtis Ogden, seen here
Carnegie, William Howard Taft, John D. Rockefeller, in 1906 while visiting Tuskegee
Henry Huttleston Rogers, George Eastman, Julius Institute.
Rosenwald, Robert Curtis Ogden, Collis Potter
Huntington, and William Henry Baldwin Jr.. The latter
donated large sums of money to agencies such as the Jeanes and Slater Funds. As a
result, countless small rural schools were established through Washington's efforts,
under programs that continued many years after his death. Along with rich white
men, the black communities helped their communities directly by donating time,
money, and labor to schools to match the funds required.[47]

Henry Huttleston Rogers

A representative case of an exceptional relationship was

Washington's friendship with millionaire industrialist and
financier Henry H. Rogers (1840–1909). Henry Rogers was
a self-made man, who had risen from a modest working-
class family to become a principal officer of Standard Oil,
and one of the richest men in the United States. Around
1894 Rogers heard Washington speak at Madison Square
Garden. The next day he contacted Washington and
requested a meeting, during which Washington later
recounted that he was told that Rogers "was surprised that
no one had 'passed the hat' after the speech". The meeting
began a close relationship that extended over a period of 15
years. Although Washington and the very-private Rogers
were seen as friends, the true depth and scope of their
relationship was not publicly revealed until after Rogers' Handbill from 1909 tour
sudden death of a stroke in May 1909. Washington was a of southern Virginia and
frequent guest at Rogers' New York office, his Fairhaven, West Virginia.
Massachusetts summer home, and aboard his steam yacht
Kanawha.

A few weeks later Washington went on a previously planned speaking tour along the
newly completed Virginian Railway, a $40-million enterprise that had been built
almost entirely from Rogers' personal fortune. As Washington rode in the late
financier's private railroad car, Dixie, he stopped and made speeches at many
locations. His companions later recounted that he had been warmly welcomed by
both black and white citizens at each stop.

Washington revealed that Rogers had been quietly funding operations of 65 small
country schools for African Americans, and had given substantial sums of money to
support Tuskegee and Hampton institutes. He also noted that Rogers had
encouraged programs with matching funds requirements so the recipients had a
stake in the outcome.

Anna T. Jeanes

In 1907 Philadelphia Quaker Anna T. Jeanes (1822–1907) donated one million dollars
to Washington for elementary schools for black children in the South. Her
contributions and those of Henry Rogers and others funded schools in many poor
communities.

Julius Rosenwald

Julius Rosenwald (1862–1932) was another self-made wealthy man with whom
Washington found common ground. By 1908 Rosenwald, son of an immigrant
clothier, had become part-owner and president of Sears, Roebuck and Company in
Chicago. Rosenwald was a philanthropist who was deeply concerned about the poor
state of African-American education, especially in the segregated Southern states,
where their schools were underfunded.[48]

In 1912 Rosenwald was asked to serve on the Board of Directors of Tuskegee

Institute, a position he held for the remainder of his life. Rosenwald endowed
Tuskegee so that Washington could spend less time fundraising and more managing
the school. Later in 1912 Rosenwald provided funds to Tuskegee for a pilot program
to build six new small schools in rural Alabama. They were designed, constructed
and opened in 1913 and 1914, and overseen by Tuskegee architects and staff; the
model proved successful.

After Washington died in 1915, Rosenwald established the Rosenwald Fund in 1917,
primarily to serve African-American students in rural areas throughout the South.
The school building program was one of its largest programs. Using the architectural
model plans developed by professors at Tuskegee Institute, the Rosenwald Fund
spent over $4 million to help build 4,977 schools, 217 teachers' homes, and 163 shop
buildings in 883 counties in 15 states, from Maryland to Texas.[49] The Rosenwald
Fund made matching grants, requiring community support, cooperation from the
white school boards, and local fundraising. Black communities raised more than $4.7
million to aid the construction and sometimes donated land and labor; essentially
they taxed themselves twice to do so.[50] These schools became informally known as
Rosenwald Schools. But the philanthropist did not want them to be named for him,
as they belonged to their communities. By his death in 1932, these newer facilities
could accommodate one third of all African-American children in Southern U.S.
schools.

Up from Slavery to the White House

Washington's long-term adviser, Timothy Thomas Fortune (1856–1928), was a
respected African-American economist and editor of The New York Age, the most
widely read newspaper in the black community within the United States. He was the
ghost-writer and editor of Washington's first autobiography, The Story of My Life and
Work.[51] Washington published five books during his lifetime with the aid of ghost-
writers Timothy Fortune, Max Bennett Thrasher and Robert E. Park.[52]
They included compilations of speeches and
essays:[53]

The Story of My Life and Work (1900)

Up from Slavery (1901)
The Story of the Negro: The Rise of the
Race from Slavery (2 vol 1909)
My Larger Education (1911)
The Man Farthest Down (1912)
Booker Washington and Theodore
In an effort to inspire the "commercial, Roosevelt at Tuskegee Institute, 1905
agricultural, educational, and industrial
advancement" of African Americans,
Washington founded the National Negro Business League (NNBL) in 1900.[54]

When Washington's second autobiography, Up from Slavery, was published in 1901,

it became a bestseller and had a major effect on the African-American community, its
friends and allies. In October 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt invited
Washington to dine with him and his family at the White House.[55] Although
Republican presidents had met privately with black leaders, this was the first highly
publicized social occasion when an African American was invited there on equal
terms by the president. Democratic Party politicians from the South, including future
governor of Mississippi James K. Vardaman and Senator Benjamin Tillman of South
Carolina, indulged in racist personal attacks when they learned of the invitation.
Both used the derogatory term for African Americans in their statements.

Vardaman described the White House as

so saturated with the odor of the n----- that the rats have taken refuge in
the stable,[56][57] and declared "I am just as much opposed to Booker T.
Washington as a voter as I am to the cocoanut-headed, chocolate-colored
typical little coon who blacks my shoes every morning. Neither is fit to
perform the supreme function of citizenship."[58]

Tillman said, "The action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that n----- will
necessitate our killing a thousand n------ in the South before they will learn their
place again."[59]

Ladislaus Hengelmüller von Hengervár, the Austro-Hungarian ambassador to the

United States, who was visiting the White House on the same day, said he found a
rabbit's foot in Washington's coat pocket when he mistakenly put on the coat. The
Washington Post described it as "the left hind foot of a graveyard rabbit, killed in the
dark of the moon".[60] The Detroit Journal quipped the next day, "The Austrian
ambassador may have made off with Booker T. Washington's coat at the White
House, but he'd have a bad time trying to fill his shoes."[60][61]

Death
Despite his extensive travels and widespread work,
Washington continued as principal of Tuskegee.
Washington's health was deteriorating rapidly in
1915; he collapsed in New York City and was
diagnosed by two different doctors as having Bright's
disease, related to kidney diseases. Told he only had a
few days left to live, Washington expressed a desire to
die at Tuskegee. He boarded a train and arrived in
Tuskegee shortly after midnight on November 14,
1915. He died a few hours later at the age of 59.[62]
His funeral was held on November 17, 1915 in the Booker T. Washington's coffin
Tuskegee Institute Chapel and it was attended by being carried to grave site.
nearly 8,000 people.[22]. He was buried nearby in the
Tuskegee University Campus Cemetery.[15]

At the time he was thought to have died by congestive heart failure, aggravated by
overwork. In March 2006, his descendants permitted examination of medical
records: these showed he had hypertension, with a blood pressure more than twice
normal, confirming what had long been suspected.[63]

At Washington's death, Tuskegee's endowment was close to $2 million.[64]

Washington's greatest life's work, the education of blacks in the South, was well
underway and expanding.

Honors and memorials

For his contributions to American society, Washington was granted an honorary
master's degree from Harvard University in 1896 and an honorary doctorate from
Dartmouth College in 1901.

At the center of Tuskegee University, the Booker T. Washington Monument was

dedicated in 1922. Called Lifting the Veil, the monument has an inscription reading:

He lifted the veil of ignorance from his people and pointed the way to
progress through education and industry.

In 1934 Robert Russa Moton, Washington's successor as president of Tuskegee

University, arranged an air tour for two African-American aviators. Afterward the
plane was renamed as the Booker T. Washington.[65]

On April 7, 1940, Washington became the first African American to be depicted on a

United States postage stamp.[66]

In 1942, the liberty ship Booker T. Washington was named in his honor, the first
major oceangoing vessel to be named after an African American. The ship was
christened by noted singer Marian Anderson.[67]

In 1946, he was honored on the first coin to feature an African American, the Booker
T. Washington Memorial Half Dollar, which was minted by the United States until
1951.[68]
 On April 5, 1956, the hundredth anniversary of
Washington's birth, the house where he was born in
Franklin County, Virginia, was designated as the Booker T.
Washington National Monument.

A state park in Chattanooga, Tennessee, was named in his

honor, as was a bridge spanning the Hampton River
adjacent to his alma mater, Hampton University.

In 1984 Hampton University dedicated a Booker T.

Washington Memorial on campus near the historic
Booker T. Washington Emancipation Oak, establishing, in the words of the
was honored on a University, "a relationship between one of America's great
Commemorative U.S. educators and social activists, and the symbol of Black
Postage stamp, issue of achievement in education".[69]
1940.
Numerous high schools, middle schools and elementary
schools[70] across the United States have been named after
Booker T. Washington.

In 2000, West Virginia State University (WVSU; then West Va. State College), in
cooperation with other organizations including the Booker T. Washington
Association, established the Booker T. Washington Institute, to honor Washington's
boyhood home, the old town of Malden, and Washington's ideals.[71]

On October 19, 2009, WVSU dedicated a monument to Booker T. Washington. The

event took place at WVSU's Booker T. Washington Park in Malden, West Virginia. The
monument also honors the families of African ancestry who lived in Old Malden in
the early 20th century and who knew and encouraged Washington. Special guest
speakers at the event included West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin III, Malden
attorney Larry L. Rowe, and the president of WVSU. Musical selections were
provided by the WVSU "Marching Swarm".[72]

At the end of the 2008 presidential election, the defeated Republican candidate
Senator John McCain recalled the stir caused a century before when President
Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to the White House. McCain noted
the evident progress in the country with the election of Democratic Senator Barack
Obama as the first African-American President of the United States.[73]

Legacy
The historiography on Booker T. Washington has varied dramatically. After his death,
he came under heavy criticism in the civil rights community for accommodationism
to white supremacy. However since the late 20th century, a more balanced view of
his very wide range of activities has appeared. As of 2010, the most recent studies,
"defend and celebrate his accomplishments, legacy, and leadership".[74]

Washington was held in high regard by business-oriented conservatives, both white

and black. Historian Eric Foner argues that the freedom movement of the late
nineteenth century changed directions so as to align with America's new economic
and intellectual framework. Black leaders emphasized economic self-help and
individual advancement into the middle class as a more fruitful strategy than
political agitation. There was emphasis on education
and literacy throughout the period after the Civil War.
Washington's famous Atlanta speech of 1895 marked
this transition, as it called on blacks to develop their
farms, their industrial skills, and their
entrepreneurship as the next stage in emerging from
slavery.[75]

By this time, Mississippi had passed a new

constitution, and other southern states were following
Sculpture of Booker T.
suit, or using electoral laws to raise barriers to voter
Washington at the National
registration; they completed disenfranchisement of Portrait Gallery in Washington,
blacks at the turn of the 20th century to maintain D.C.
white supremacy. But at the same time, Washington
secretly arranged to fund numerous legal challenges
to such voting restrictions and segregation, which he believed was the way they had
to be attacked.[10]

Washington repudiated the historic abolitionist emphasis on unceasing agitation for

full equality, advising blacks that it was counterproductive to fight segregation at
that point. Foner concludes that Washington's strong support in the black community
was rooted in its widespread realization that, given their legal and political realities,
frontal assaults on white supremacy were impossible, and the best way forward was
to concentrate on building up their economic and social structures inside segregated
communities.[76] Historian C. Vann Woodward in 1951 wrote of Washington, "The
businessman's gospel of free enterprise, competition, and laissez faire never had a
more loyal exponent."[77]

Historians since the late 20th century have been divided in their characterization of
Washington: some describe him as a visionary capable of "read[ing] minds with the
skill of a master psychologist," who expertly played the political game in 19th-
century Washington by its own rules.[4] Others say he was a self-serving, crafty
narcissist who threatened and punished those in the way of his personal interests,
traveled with an entourage, and spent much time fundraising, signing autographs,
and giving flowery patriotic speeches with much flag waving — acts more indicative
of an artful political boss than an altruistic civil rights leader.[4]

People called Washington the "Wizard of Tuskegee" because of his highly developed
political skills, and his creation of a nationwide political machine based on the black
middle class, white philanthropy, and Republican Party support. Opponents called
this network the "Tuskegee Machine". Washington maintained control because of his
ability to gain support of numerous groups, including influential whites and black
business, educational and religious communities nationwide. He advised on the use
of financial donations from philanthropists, and avoided antagonizing white
Southerners with his accommodation to the political realities of the age of Jim Crow
segregation.[31]

The Tuskegee machine collapsed rapidly after Washington's death. He was the
charismatic leader who held it all together, with the aid of Emmett Jay Scott. But the
trustees replaced Scott, and the elaborate system fell apart.[78][79] Critics in the
1920s to 1960s, especially those connected with the NAACP, ridiculed Tuskegee as a
producer of a submissive black laborers. Since the late 20th century historians have
given much more favorable view, emphasizing the school’s illustrious faculty and the
progressive black movements, institutions and leaders in education, politics,
architecture, medicine and other professions it produced who worked hard in
communities across the United States, and indeed worldwide across the African
Diaspora.[80] Deborah Morowski points out that Tuskegee's curriculum served to
help students achieve a sense of personal and collective efficacy. She concludes:

The social studies curriculum provided an opportunity for the uplift of African
Americans at time when these opportunities were few and far between for black
youth. The curriculum provided inspiration for African Americans to advance their
standing in society, to change the view of southern whites toward the value of
blacks, and ultimately, to advance racial equality,[81] At a time when most Blacks
were poor farmers in the South, and were ignored by the national Black
leadership, Washington's Tuskegee made their needs a high priority. They lobbied
for government funds, and especially from philanthropies that enabled the
Institute to provide model farming techniques, advanced training, and
organizational skills. These included Annual Negro Conferences, the Tuskegee
Experiment Station, the Agricultural Short Course, the Farmers' Institutes, the
Farmers' County Fairs, the Movable School, and numerous pamphlets and feature
stories sent free to the South's black newspapers.[82]

Washington took the lead in promoting educational uplift for the African Diaspora,
often with .funding from the Phelps Stokes Fund or in collaboration with foreign
sources, such as the German government.[83][84]

Descendants
Washington's first daughter by Fannie, Portia Marshall Washington (1883–1978), was
a trained pianist who married Tuskegee educator and architect William Sidney
Pittman in 1900. They had three children. Pittman faced several difficulties in trying
to build his practice while his wife built her musical profession. After he assaulted
their daughter Fannie in the midst of an argument, Portia took Fannie and left
Pittman.[85]

She resettled at Tuskegee. She was removed from the faculty in 1939 because she
did not have an academic degree, but she opened her own piano teaching practice
for a few years. After retiring in 1944 at the age of 61, she dedicated her efforts in
the 1940s to memorializing her father. She succeeded in getting her father's bust
placed in the Hall of Fame in New York, a 50-cent coin minted with his image, and
his Virginia birthplace being declared a National Monument. Portia Washington
Pittman died on February 26, 1978, in Washington, D.C.[85]

Booker Jr. (1887–1945) married Nettie Blair Hancock (1887–1972). Their daughter,
Nettie Hancock Washington (1917–1982), became a teacher and taught at a high
school in Washington, D.C. for twenty years. She married physician Frederick
Douglass III (1913–1942), a great-grandson of Frederick Douglass, the famed
abolitionist and orator. Nettie and Frederick's daughter, Nettie Washington Douglass,
and her son, Kenneth Morris, co-founded the Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives,
an anti-sex trafficking organization.

Representation in other media

 Washington and his family's visit to the White House was dramatized as the
subject of an opera, A Guest of Honor, by Scott Joplin, noted African-American
composer. It was first produced in 1903.[86]
E. L. Doctorow's 1975 novel Ragtime features a fictional version of Washington
trying to negotiate the surrender of an African-American musician who is
threatening to blow up the Pierpont Morgan Library. The role was played by Moses
Gunn in the 1981 film adaptation.
Washington was portrayed by Roger Guenveur Smith in the 2020 Netflix miniseries
Self Made, based on the life of Madame C. J. Walker.

Works
The Future of the American Negro – 1899
Up from Slavery – 1901
Character Building – 1902
Working with the Hands – 1904
Tuskegee & Its People (editor) – 1905
The Negro in the South (with W. E. B. Du Bois) – 1907

See also
African American literature
Booker T. Washington High School (disambiguation)
Booker T. Washington Junior College
Booker T. Washington National Monument, in Virginia
Booker T. Washington State Park (Tennessee)
Double-duty dollar
Hampton University, Virginia
List of civil rights leaders
List of things named after Booker T. Washington
Ralph Waldo Tyler
Roscoe Simmons
Rosenwald School

References
1. "Washington, Booker T." in Gale Contextual Encyclopedia of American Literature,
(vol. 4, Gale, 2009), pp. 1626–1630. online (https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3008
100496/GPS?u=wikipedia&sid=GPS&xid=6fd534a8)
2. Pildes, Richard H. (July 13, 2000). "Democracy, Anti-Democracy, and the Canon".
Constitutional Commentary. Rochester, NY. 17: 295–319. doi:10.2139/ssrn.224731
(https://doi.org/10.2139%2Fssrn.224731). hdl:11299/168068 (https://hdl.handle.ne
t/11299%2F168068). SSRN 224731 (https://ssrn.com/abstract=224731).
3. Huggins, Nathan Irvin (2007). Harlem Renaissance (https://books.google.com/book
s?id=JlJorH5HL_wC&pg=PA19#v=onepage). Oxford University President. pp. 19–
20. ISBN 978-0-19-983902-5.
 4. Bieze, Michael Scott; Gasman, Marybeth, eds. (March 26, 2012). Booker T.
Washington Rediscovered (https://books.google.com/books?id=GcvFoRcObNUC&pg
=PA209). Johns Hopkins UP. p. 209. ISBN 978-1-4214-0470-7.
5. Dagbovie, Pero Gaglo (2010). African American history reconsidered. Urbana.
p. 145. ISBN 978-0-252-03521-0. OCLC 456551364 (https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/
456551364).
6. West, Michael Rudolph (2006). The Education of Booker T. Washington: American
Democracy and the Idea of Race Relations (https://archive.org/details/educationofb
ooke00west). New York: Columbia University Press. p. 84 (https://archive.org/detail
s/educationofbooke00west/page/84).
7. "Booker T. Washington." in Contemporary Black Biography (vol. 4, Gale, 1993)
online (https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/K1606000145/BIC?u=wikipedia&sid=BIC&xi
d=93070a71)
8. Norrell 2009, p. 26.
9. Abraham Aamidor, "'Cast down Your Bucket Where You Are': The Parallel Views of
Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald on the Road to Equality." Journal of the
Illinois State Historical Society 99#1 (2006): 46-61 Online (https://www.jstor.org/sta
ble/40193910).
10. Richard H. Pildes, Democracy, Anti-Democracy, and the Canon, Constitutional
Commentary, vol. 17, 2000, pp. 13–14 (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?ab
stract_id=224731). Accessed March 10, 2008
11. Meier 1957.
12. Norrell 2009, pp. 4, 130.
13. Robert J. Norrell, "Booker T. Washington: Understanding the Wizard of Tuskegee."
Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 42 (2003): 96-109. Online (https://www.jstor.o
rg/stable/3592453)
14. Washington 1906, p. 1.
15. Booker T. Washington (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/1073) at Find a Grave
16. Washington 1906, p. 2.
17. Washington 1906, p. 34.
18. Washington 1906, p. 9.
19. Washington 1906, pp. 19-21.
20. Washington 1906, p. 27.
21. Washington 1906, p. 35.
22. "Booker T. Washington | Tuskegee University" (https://www.tuskegee.edu/discover-t
u/tu-presidents/booker-t-washington). www.tuskegee.edu. Retrieved February 25,
2019.
23. Gary, Shannon (June 30, 2008). "Tuskegee University" (https://web.archive.org/we
b/20200418085131/http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-1583).
Encyclopedia of Alabama. Birmingham, AL: Alabama Humanities Foundation.
Archived from the original (http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-1583)
on April 18, 2020.
24. "The Booker T. Washington Era (Part 1)" (http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/ex
hibit/aopart6.html). African American Odyssey. Library of Congress. Retrieved
September 3, 2008..
25. Harlan 1972.
26. "The Oaks" (https://www.nps.gov/museum/exhibits/tuskegee/btwoaks.htm),
Tuskegee Museum, National Park Service
27. Southeastern Regional Office of the National Park Service (2018). The Oaks:
Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site Cultural Landscape Report (http://npshistor
y.com/publications/tuin/clr-oaks.pdf) (PDF). Atlanta, GA: National Park Service. p. 1.
"After Dr. Washington’s death in 1915, his wife Margaret Murray Washington
occupied the residence until her death in 1925."
28. Harlan, Louis (1971). "The secret life of Booker T. Washington". The Journal of
Southern History. 37 (3): 393–416. doi:10.2307/2206948 (https://doi.org/10.2307%
2F2206948). JSTOR 2206948 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/2206948).
29. "Booker T. Washington" (https://web.archive.org/web/20200510080242/https://ww
w.britannica.com/biography/Booker-T-Washington) . Encyclopedia Britannica.
Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. April 1, 2020. Archived from the original (https://www.
britannica.com/biography/Booker-T-Washington) on May 10, 2020. Retrieved
May 13, 2020.
30. "Booker T. Washington Monument to Be Dedicated in Malden" (https://web.archive.
org/web/20120218230444/http://www.wvstateu.edu/news/default.aspx?
news=233). WVSU. Archived from the original (http://www.wvstateu.edu/news/defa
ult.aspx?news=233) on February 18, 2012.
31. Harlan 1983, p. 359.
32. "Choate and Twain Plead for Tuskegee | Brilliant Audience Cheers Them and Booker
Washington" (http://www.twainquotes.com/19060123.html), The New York Times,
January 23, 1906.
33. Anderson 1988.
34. Washington 1901.
35. Bauerlein 2004, p. 106.
36. Pole 1974, p. 888.
37. Du Bois 1903, pp. 41–59.
38. Pole 1974, p. 107.
39. Crouch 2005, p. 96.
40. Sherer, Robert G. (1930). "William Burns Paterson: "Pioneer as well as Apostle of
Negro Education in Alabama" (https://archive.org/stream/alabamahistorica3619mo
nt#page/146/mode/2up). The Alabama Historical Quarterly. 36 (2: summer 1974):
146–147. Retrieved July 10, 2017.
41. Du Bois 1903, p. 189.
42. Pole 1974, p. 980.
43. Walker, Clarence E. (1991), Deromanticising Black History, University of Tennessee
Press, p. 32.
44. Washington, Harlan & Blassingame 1972, p. 68.
45. Maxell, Anne (2002), "Montrer l'Autre: Franz Boas et les sœurs Gerhard", in Bancel,
Nicolas; Blanchard, Pascal; Boëtsch, Gilles; Deroo, Eric; Lemaire, Sandrine (eds.),
Zoos humains. De la Vénus hottentote aux reality shows, La Découverte, pp. 331–
39, in part. p. 338
46. Harlan 1971, p. 397.
47. Norrell, Up from History (2009) pp. 273–75, 368–70.
48. Williams, Juan (Spring 2012). "Educating a Nation" (http://www.philanthropyroundta
ble.org/topic/excellence_in_philanthropy/educating_a_nation). Philanthropy.
Retrieved June 6, 2012.
49. "National Trust Names Rosenwald Schools One of America's 11 Most Endangered
Historic Places" (https://web.archive.org/web/20051230203445/http://www.national
trust.org/news/docs/20020606_rosenwald.html). History Is in Our Hands (Press
release). National Trust for Historic Preservation. June 6, 2002. Archived from the
original (http://www.nationaltrust.org/news/docs/20020606_rosenwald.html) on
December 30, 2005. Retrieved March 26, 2006.
50. "The Herbert S. Ford Memorial Museum" (https://web.archive.org/web/2006051514
4853/http://ford.claiborneone.org/). Claiborneone. Archived from the original (htt
p://ford.claiborneone.org/) on May 15, 2006.
51. Charlotte D. Fitzgerald (2001). "The Story of My Life and Work: Booker T.
Washington's Other Autobiography". The Black Scholar. Vol. 21 no. 4. pp. 35–40.
52. Harlan 1983, p. 290.
53. The Booker T. Washington Papers, ed. by Louis R. Harlan et al. Vol. I: The
Autobiographical Writings (1972).
54. Jim Crow (https://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_org_business.html), PBS.
55. "Theodore Roosevelt and Booker T. Washington." in American Decades Primary
Sources, edited by Cynthia Rose, (vol. 1: 1900–1909, Gale, 2004), pp. 365-367.
onlind (https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3490200111/GPS?u=wikipedia&sid=GPS&
xid=03df6468).
56. Wickham, DeWayne (February 14, 2002). "Book fails to strip meaning of 'N' word"
(https://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/columnists/wickham/2002-02-15-wickha
m.htm). USA Today.
57. Miller, Nathan (November 11, 1993). Theodore Roosevelt: A Life (https://books.goo
gle.com/books?id=2maGdg-nHCIC&pg=PA362&dq=Vardaman+rats+refuge#v=on
epage). HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-688-13220-0.
58. Rubio, Philip F. (September 18, 2009), Books (https://books.google.com/books?id=V
gMRHB3dvNIC&pg=PA71&dq=Rubio+coon#v=onepage), ISBN 978-1-60473-031-9.
59. Kennedy, Randall (2002). "The Protean N-Word" (https://www.washingtonpost.com/
wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/nigger.htm). Nigger: The Strange Career of a
Troublesome Word (https://archive.org/details/niggerstrangecar00kenn). Pantheon.
ISBN 978-0-375-42172-3.
60. Booker T. Washington Papers (https://web.archive.org/web/20100224003633/http://
www.historycooperative.org/btw/Vol.8/html/437.html), 8, archived from the original
(http://www.historycooperative.org/btw/Vol.8/html/437.html) on February 24, 2010,
retrieved September 21, 2009.
61. Detroit Journal, November 14, 1905 Missing or empty |title= (help).
62. "The Death of Booker T. Washington" (https://www.nps.gov/bowa/learn/historycultu
re/upload/the-final-btwdeath-site-bulletin.pdf) (PDF). Booker T. Washington National
Monument (National Park Service). Retrieved April 5, 2018.
63. Dominguez, Alex (May 6, 2006). "Booker T. Washington's Death Revisited" (https://
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/05/AR2006050501345.h
tml). Washington Post. Associated Press. ISSN 0190-8286 (https://www.worldcat.or
g/issn/0190-8286). Retrieved April 5, 2018.
64. Brown, Angelique (July 18, 2011). "Washington, Booker Taliaferro" (https://socialwel
fare.library.vcu.edu/programs/education/washington-booker-taliaferro/). Social
Welfare History Project. Virginia Commonwealth University. Retrieved April 5, 2018.
65. Tucker, Phillip Thomas (2012). Father of the Tuskegee Airmen, John C. Robinson (htt
ps://books.google.com/books?id=CyaIfPI81FwC&pg=PA58&lpg=PA58&dq=1934+a
viators+%22booker+t+washington%22#v=onepage). Potomac Books. p. 58.
ISBN 978-1-59797-487-5.
66. "African American Subjects on United States Postage Stamps - Who We Are - USPS"
(https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history/african-american-stamp-subject
s.htm). about.usps.com. Retrieved March 27, 2020.
67. Marian Anderson christens the liberty ship Booker T. Washington (https://archive.is/
20120629120539/http://unitproj.library.ucla.edu/dlib/lat/display.cfm?ms=uclamss_1
387_b10_28752-2&searchType=subject&subjectID=223751), UCLA, archived from
the original (http://unitproj.library.ucla.edu/dlib/lat/display.cfm?ms=uclamss_1387_
b10_28752-2&searchType=subject&subjectID=223751) on June 29, 2012.
68. "Booker T. Washington Memorial Half Dollar" (https://www.usmint.gov/coins/coin-m
edal-programs/commemorative-coins/booker-t-washington-memorial-half). United
States Mint. Retrieved January 22, 2020.
69. Hamilton, Ed, "Booker T Washington", Works (https://web.archive.org/web/2007040
7141113/http://www.edhamiltonworks.com/booker_t_washington.htm), archived
from the original (http://www.edhamiltonworks.com/booker_t_washington.htm) on
April 7, 2007.
70. Washington Elementary in Mesa Arizona (http://www2.mpsaz.org/washington/),
MPSAZ.
71. "About BTWI" (https://web.archive.org/web/20151118014454/http://www.wvstateu.
edu/about-wvsu/booker-t-washington-institute/about-btwi.aspx). West Virginia
State University. Archived from the original (http://www.wvstateu.edu/about-wvsu/b
ooker-t-washington-institute/about-btwi.aspx) on November 18, 2015. Retrieved
November 5, 2015.
72. White, Davin (October 19, 2009). "Booker T. Washington monument unveiled" (http
s://web.archive.org/web/20100407015153/http://wvgazette.com/News/200910190
706). Charleston Gazette. Archived from the original (http://wvgazette.com/News/2
00910190706) on April 7, 2010. Retrieved October 19, 2009.
73. "Transcript Of John McCain's Concession Speech" (https://www.npr.org/templates/st
ory/story.php?storyId=96631784). NPR.org. November 5, 2008.
74. Pero Gaglo Dagbovie, ed. African American History Reconsidered (2010) p. 145.
75. Robert J. Norrell, "Booker T. Washington: Understanding the Wizard of Tuskegee."
Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 42 (2003): 96-109.
76. Eric Foner, Give The Liberty! An American History (2008), p. 659.
77. C. Vann Woodward (1951). Origins of the New South, 1877–1913 (https://books.goo
gle.com/books?id=rTK1N6owT1YC&pg=PA366). LSU Press. p. 366. ISBN 978-0-
8071-0019-6.
78. Manning Marable, "Tuskegee Institute in the 1920's" Negro History Bulletin 40.6
(1977): 764-768 Online (https://www.jstor.org/stable/44176406).
79. Carl S. Matthews, "Decline of Tuskegee Machine, 1915-1925-Abdication of Political-
Power." South Atlantic Quarterly 75#4 (1976): 460-469 .
80. Pamela Newkirk, "Tuskegee’s Talented Tenth: Reconciling a Legacy." Journal of
Asian and African Studies 51.3 (2016): 328-345.
81. Deborah L. Morowski, "Public perceptions, private agendas: Washington, Moton,
and the secondary curriculum of Tuskegee Institute 1910-1926." American
Educational History Journal 40.1/2 (2013): 1-20, quoting p. 17
"PUBLIC+PERCEPTIONS,+PRIVATE+AGENDAS."&ots=fZLOzcMrho&sig=W5Pc7Mrx_n
online (https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=xy24AgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg
=PA1&dq=).
82. Jones, Allen W. (1975). "The Role of Tuskegee Institute in the Education of Black
Farmers". The Journal of Negro History. 60 (2): 252–267. doi:10.2307/2717374 (htt
ps://doi.org/10.2307%2F2717374). JSTOR 2717374 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/27
17374).
83. Vincent P. Franklin, "Pan-African connections, transnational education, collective
cultural capital, and opportunities industrialization centers international." Journal of
African American History 96#1 (2011): 44-61. Excerpt (https://www.journals.uchica
go.edu/doi/abs/10.5323/jafriamerhist.96.1.0044?journalCode=jaah)
84. Andrew Zimmerman, Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German empire,
and the globalization of the New South (2012) Excerpt (https://perspectivia.net/ser
vlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/ploneimport3_derivate_00002842/Zimmerman_Washingt
on.pdf).
85. Hardman, Peggy (June 15, 2010). "Pittman, Portia Marshall Washington" (https://we
b.archive.org/web/20181118114958/https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/article
s/fpime). tshaonline.org. Texas State Historical Association. Archived from the
original (https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fpime) on November 18,
2018. Retrieved April 27, 2020.
86. Ray Argyle (2009). Scott Joplin and the Age of Ragtime. McFarland, pp. 56ff.

Primary sources
Du Bois, W.E.B. (1903), "3" (http://www.bartleby.com/114/3.html), The Souls of
Black Folk, Bartleby.
Washington, Booker T. (September 1895), The Atlanta Cotton States Exposition
Address (http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/39/), History Matters, GMU.
——— (September 1896), "The Awakening of the Negro" (https://www.theatlantic.c
om/magazine/archive/1969/12/the-awakening-of-the-negro/5449/), The Atlantic
Monthly, 78
——— (1901). Up from Slavery: An Autobiography (http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/was
hington/washing.html). Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Documenting the American
South. Other online full-text versions available via Project Gutenberg (http://digital.l
ibrary.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=2376), UNC Library (http://docsout
h.unc.edu/fpn/washington/menu.html)
——— (1906) [1901]. Up from Slavery: An Autobiography (https://archive.org/detail
s/upfromslaveryan08washgoog). New York: Doubleday, Page & Co.
——— (October 1903), "The Fruits of Industrial Training" (https://www.theatlantic.co
m/magazine/archive/1903/10/the-fruits-of-industrial-training/531030/), The Atlantic
Monthly, 92
——— (December 1906). "A Farmers' College on Wheels" (https://books.google.co
m/books?id=3IfNAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA8352). The World's Work: A History of Our
Time. XIII: 8352–54. Retrieved July 10, 2009.
——— (October 1910). "Chapters From My Experience I" (https://books.google.com/
books?id=HsrkfU461xAC&pg=PA13505). The World's Work: A History of Our Time.
XX: 13505–22. Retrieved July 10, 2009.
——— (November 1910). "Chapters From My Experience II" (https://books.google.c
om/books?id=Zm0AAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA13627). The World's Work: A History of Our
Time. XXI: 13627–40. Retrieved July 10, 2009.
——— (December 1910). "Chapters From My Experience III" (https://books.google.c
om/books?id=Zm0AAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA13783). The World's Work: A History of Our
Time. XXI: 13784–94. Retrieved July 10, 2009.
——— (January 1911). "Chapters From My Experience IV" (https://books.google.co
m/books?id=Zm0AAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA13847). The World's Work: A History of Our
Time. XXI: 13847–54. Retrieved July 10, 2009.
——— (February 1911). "Chapters From My Experience V" (https://books.google.co
m/books?id=Zm0AAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA14032). The World's Work: A History of Our
 Time. XXI: 14032–39. Retrieved July 10, 2009.
——— (April 1911). "Chapters From My Experience VI" (https://books.google.com/b
ooks?id=Zm0AAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA14230). The World's Work: A History of Our Time.
XXI: 14230–38. Retrieved July 10, 2009.
Washington, Booker T.; Harlan, Louis R.; Blassingame, John W. (1972). "Volume
1:The Autobiographical Writings" (https://books.google.com/books?id=4yTkxGiI4m
kC). The Booker T. Washington Papers. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-
00242-7. Fourteen-volume set of all letters to and from Booker T. Washington.
Washington, Booker T.; Harlan, Louis R.; Blassingame, John W. (1972). "Volume 14:
Cumulative Index" (https://web.archive.org/web/20060818024631/http://www.ulleti
n.org/btw/Vol.14/html/). The Booker T. Washington Papers. University of Illinois
Press. Archived from the original (http://www.historycooperative.org/btw/Vol.14/ht
ml/) on August 18, 2006.Site Bulletin Booker T. Washington National Monument,
2016.

Further reading
Anderson, James D (1988), The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935.
Bauerlein, Mark (2004), "Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois: The origins of
a bitter intellectual battle", Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, 46 (46): 106–
114, doi:10.2307/4133693 (https://doi.org/10.2307%2F4133693), JSTOR 4133693
(https://www.jstor.org/stable/4133693)
Boston, Michael B (2010), The Business Strategy of Booker T. Washington: Its
Development and Implementation, University Press of Florida; 243 pp. Studies the
content and influence of his philosophy of entrepreneurship
Hamilton, Kenneth M. Booker T. Washington in American Memory (U of Illinois
Press, 2017), 250 pp.
Harlan, Louis R (1972), Booker T. Washington: volume 1: The Making of a Black
Leader, 1856–1901, the major scholarly biography
Harlan, Louis R (1983), Booker T. Washington; volume 2: The Wizard of
Tuskegee 1901–1915 (https://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=78995092).
Harlan, Louis R (1988), Booker T. Washington in Perspective (https://www.questia.c
om/PM.qst?a=o&d=104404815) (essays), University Press of Mississippi.
Harlan, Louis R (1971), "The Secret Life of Booker T. Washington", Journal of
Southern History, 37 (2): 393–416, doi:10.2307/2206948 (https://doi.org/10.2307%
2F2206948), JSTOR 2206948 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/2206948). Documents
Booker T. Washington's secret financing and directing of litigation against
segregation and disfranchisement.
McMurry, Linda O (1982), George Washington Carver, Scientist and Symbol (http
s://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=106358296).
Meier, August (May 1957), "Toward a Reinterpretation of Booker T. Washington",
The Journal of Southern History, 23 (2): 220–27, doi:10.2307/2955315 (https://doi.o
rg/10.2307%2F2955315), JSTOR 2955315 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/2955315).
Documents Booker T. Washington's secret financing and directing of litigation
against segregation and disfranchisement.
Norrell, Robert J (2009), Up from History: The Life of Booker T. Washington (https://a
rchive.org/details/upfromhistorylif0000norr), Belknap Press/Harvard University
Press, ISBN 978-0-674-03211-8, favorable scholarly biography.
Smith, David L (1997), "Commanding Performance: Booker T. Washington's Atlanta
Compromise Address", in Gerster, Patrick; Cords, Nicholas (eds.), Myth America: A
 Historical Anthology (https://archive.org/details/mythamerica0000unse), II, St.
James, NY: Brandywine Press, ISBN 978-1-881089-97-1.
Smock, Raymond (2009), Booker T. Washington: Black Leadership in the Age of Jim
Crow, Chicago: Ivan R Dee.
Wintz, Cary D (1996), African American Political Thought, 1890–1930: Washington,
Du Bois, Garvey, and Randolph (https://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=1049120
65).
Pole, JR (1974), "Review: Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others; The Children of
Pride", The Historical Journal, 17 (4): 883–893, doi:10.1017/S0018246X00007962
(https://doi.org/10.1017%2FS0018246X00007962), JSTOR 2638562 (https://www.jst
or.org/stable/2638562).
Zimmerman, Andrew (2012), Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German
Empire, and the Globalization of the New South, Princeton: Princeton University
Press.

Historiography
Bieze, Michael Scott, and Marybeth Gasman, eds. Booker T. Washington
Rediscovered (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), 265 pp. scholarly essays
Brundage, W Fitzhugh, ed. (2003), Booker T. Washington and Black Progress: Up
from Slavery 100 Years Later.
Dagbovie, Pero Gaglo. "Exploring a Century of Historical Scholarship on Booker T.
Washington," Journal of African American History 92#2 (2007), pp. 239–264 in
JSTOR (https://www.jstor.org/stable/20064182); also pp 127-57 partly online (http
s://books.google.com/books?id=KMum6d1bX-cC&pg=PA127)
Friedman, Lawrence J (October 1974), "Life 'In the Lion's Mouth': Another Look at
Booker T. Washington", Journal of Negro History, 59 (4): 337–351,
doi:10.2307/2717315 (https://doi.org/10.2307%2F2717315), JSTOR 2717315 (http
s://www.jstor.org/stable/2717315).
Harlan, Louis R (October 1970), "Booker T. Washington in Biographical
Perspective", American Historical Review, 75 (6): 1581–99, doi:10.2307/1850756
(https://doi.org/10.2307%2F1850756), JSTOR 1850756 (https://www.jstor.org/stabl
e/1850756)
Norrell, Robert J. "Booker T. Washington: Understanding the Wizard of Tuskegee,"
Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 42 (2003–4), pp. 96–109 in JSTOR (https://ww
w.jstor.org/stable/3592453)
Strickland, Arvarh E (December 1973), "Booker T. Washington: The Myth and the
Man", Reviews in American History (Review), 1 (4): 559–564, doi:10.2307/2701723
(https://doi.org/10.2307%2F2701723), JSTOR 2701723 (https://www.jstor.org/stabl
e/2701723).
Zeringue, Joshua Thomas. "Booker T. Washington and the Historians: How
Changing Views on Race Relations, Economics, and Education Shaped Washington
Historiography, 1915-2010" (MA Thesis, LSU, 2015) online (https://web.archive.org/
web/20160412055132/http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-11162015-120200/unr
estricted/zeringuethesis.pdf).

External links
Works by Booker T. Washington (https://www.gutenberg.org/author/Washington,+B
ooker+T.) at Project Gutenberg
 Works by or about Booker T. Washington (https://archive.org/search.php?query=%2
8%28subject%3A%22Washington%2C%20Booker%20Taliaferro%22%20OR%20subj
ect%3A%22Washington%2C%20Booker%20T%2E%22%20OR%20subject%3A%22
Washington%2C%20B%2E%20T%2E%22%20OR%20subject%3A%22Booker%20Tali
aferro%20Washington%22%20OR%20subject%3A%22Booker%20T%2E%20Washin
gton%22%20OR%20subject%3A%22B%2E%20T%2E%20Washington%22%20OR%
20subject%3A%22Washington%2C%20Booker%22%20OR%20subject%3A%22Boo
ker%20Washington%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Booker%20Taliaferro%20Washi
ngton%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Booker%20T%2E%20Washington%22%20O
R%20creator%3A%22B%2E%20T%2E%20Washington%22%20OR%20creator%3
A%22B%2E%20Taliaferro%20Washington%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Washingt
on%2C%20Booker%20Taliaferro%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Washington%2C%
20Booker%20T%2E%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Washington%2C%20B%2E%20
T%2E%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Washington%2C%20B%2E%20Taliaferro%2
2%20OR%20creator%3A%22Booker%20Washington%22%20OR%20creator%3A%2
2Washington%2C%20Booker%22%20OR%20title%3A%22Booker%20Taliaferro%20
Washington%22%20OR%20title%3A%22Booker%20T%2E%20Washington%22%20
OR%20title%3A%22B%2E%20T%2E%20Washington%22%20OR%20title%3A%22B
ooker%20Washington%22%20OR%20description%3A%22Booker%20Taliaferro%20
Washington%22%20OR%20description%3A%22Booker%20T%2E%20Washington%
22%20OR%20description%3A%22B%2E%20T%2E%20Washington%22%20OR%20
description%3A%22Washington%2C%20Booker%20Taliaferro%22%20OR%20descri
ption%3A%22Washington%2C%20Booker%20T%2E%22%20OR%20description%3
A%22Booker%20Washington%22%20OR%20description%3A%22Washington%2C%
20Booker%22%29%20OR%20%28%221856-1915%22%20AND%20Washington%2
9%29%20AND%20%28-mediatype:software%29) at Internet Archive
Works by Booker T. Washington (https://librivox.org/author/3597) at LibriVox (public
domain audiobooks)
"Booker T. Washington: The Man and the Myth Revisited." (2007) PowerPoint
presentation By Dana Chandler (https://web.archive.org/web/20160315155135/htt
p://192.203.127.197/archive/handle/123456789/834)
Booker T. Washington (https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/btwashington/) (online
resources), Library of Congress
The Booker T. Washington Society Library (http://btwsociety.org/library/) (online
resources), The Booker T. Washington Society
Booker T. Washington papers, 1853–1946 (finding aid) (http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/e
admss.ms998017), Library of Congress, index to over 300,000 items related to
Washington available at the Library of Congress and on microfilm.
"Booker T. Washington" (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/1073). Educator
and social reformer. Find a Grave. January 1, 2001. Retrieved August 18, 2011.
"Writings of Writings of B. Washington and Du Bois" (http://www.c-span.org/video/?
165130-1/writings-b-washington-du-bois) from C-SPAN's American Writers: A
Journey Through History
Booker T. Washington (http://georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu/topics/historical_markers/c
ounty/fulton/booker-t.-washington) historical marker in Piedmont Park, Atlanta,
Georgia
Newspaper clippings about Booker T. Washington (http://purl.org/pressemappe20/f
older/pe/018165) in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Booker_T._Washington&oldid=966788207"

This page was last edited on 9 July 2020, at 06:13 (UTC).

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may
apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered
trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.