Research topic: Booker Taliaferro Washington

Booker Taliaferro Washington 1856-1915, American educator, b. Franklin co., Va. His mother was a mulatto slave on a plantation, his father a white man. After the Civil War, he worked in salt furnaces and coal mines in Malden, W.Va., and attended school part time, until he was able to enter the Hampton Institute (Va.). A friend of the principal paid his tuition, and he worked as a janitor to earn his room and board. After three years (1872-75) at Hampton he taught at a school for African-American children in Malden, then studied at Wayland Seminary, Washington, D.C. Appointed (1879) an instructor... Read more