Washington, Booker T.

Washington, Booker T. (1856–1915), African‐American educator and leader.Born into slavery in Hale's Ford, Virginia, Washington was nine years old at the conclusion of the Civil War when he walked with his mother, brother, and sister from Virginia to Malden, West Virginia, to join his stepfather. There he worked as a child laborer in a salt‐processing operation and in a coal mine, escaping that work eventually to become a houseboy for his employer's wife, Mrs. Viola Ruffin, who encouraged his educational aspirations. At sixteen he made his way from Malden to Hampton, Virginia, a distance of five hundred miles, and was admitted to Hampton Institute, a training school for former slaves, founded and led by Samuel Chapman Armstrong of Massachusetts. He graduated in 1875.

When Armstrong, his lifetime mentor and adviser, was asked by officials at Tuskegee, Alabama, to suggest someone who could establish another school for former slaves, Armstrong recommended Washington, who in 1881 founded Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, modeling it closely on his alma mater.

Washington built the school by tirelessly seeking funds from northern philanthropists introduced to him by Armstrong. In 1895, the year of the death of the first widely recognized leader of African Americans, Frederick Douglass, Washington was invited to deliver an address at the so‐called Atlanta Exposition, a project designed to encourage northern investment in southern commerce. The invitation reflected the recognition that black labor must play a key role in any scheme to rebuild the South's economy after the devastation of the Civil War. Washington's position made him a perfect mediator among southern and northern white entrepreneurs and former slaves. In the speech (sometimes called the “Atlanta Compromise”), Washington pledged that blacks in the South would be faithful laborers, would oppose unions, and would eschew political and social equality, even to the extent of surrendering the newly won right to vote and accepting racial segregation. Supported by powerful whites both north and south, and pledged not to oppose the racial status quo, Washington became the recognized leader of black America.

Washington's most fervent opponent, W.E.B. Du Bois, called in no uncertain terms for the vote, the immediate end of segregation, adequate education for black children, and full equality. But though Washington's power and influence waned in his later years, he was never entirely displaced as a prominent and powerful figure in national politics and African‐American affairs generally. The mechanism through which he exercised his power has been called “the Tuskegee machine,” and indeed his social and political role did resemble that of a political boss. A wide network of correspondents regularly reported to him on the activities of his critics, rivals, and enemies; he controlled or influenced a number of African American newspapers throughout the country; and he carried on many of his activities surreptitiously, even his attempts to fight racism, lynching, and segregation. His widely read autobiography, Up from Slavery, appeared in 1901.
See also Gilded Age; Trotter, William Monroe.

Bibliography

Louis R. Harlan , Booker T. Washington: The Making of a Black Leader, 1856–1910, 1972.
Louis R. Harlan , Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901–1915, 1983.

Donald B. Gibson