Booker T. Washington
Booker T. Washington Born as Booker Taliaferro on April 5, 1856 to a slave named Jane and her white master, Booker T. Washington grew to become a prominent African American educator, author, and author, as well as advisor to Republican presidents (Wiki). He was considered the most significant black educator due to his control over the flow of funds to black schools and universities (Wormser). After the Emancipation Proclamation led them to be freed, Jane moved her family to rejoin her husband in West Virginia; there Washington worked in many different manual labor jobs, such as salt furnaces and coalmines, before making his way to seek his education at Hampton Institute (Wormser). Washington became a star student under the guidance of General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, the head of Hampton (Wormser). After working his way through Hampton, Washington attended college at Wayland Seminary, presently Virginia Union University (Wiki). Returning to live with his family in Malden, West Virginia, Washington met and married his first wife, Fannie Smith, in 1881 (Wiki). That same year he returned to teach at Hampton. There General Armstrong told Washington of a letter he had received a letter from a gentleman in Alabama, asking him to recommend a white principal for a colored school in Tuskegee which was going to be opened (Wormser). In 1881, Washington founded Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute on the Hampton model in the Black Belt of Alabama (Wormser). Forced to begin with a broken down building, Washington eventually won the trust of white Southerners and Northern philanthropists, in order to make Tuskegee into a model school of industrial education (Wormser). He reassured whites that nothing in his educational program defied white supremacy or presented economic competition with whites (Wormser). He accepted racial subordination as unavoidable, at least until blacks could prove themselves worthy of full civil and political rights (Wormser). As far as blacks
Cited: Wormser, Richard. "The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow." PBS. PBS, 2002. Web. 08 Feb. 2013. "Booker T. Washington." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 02 June 2013. Web. 08 Feb. 2013.