The end of the Civil War brought a time known as the Reconstruction. During this time, the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery. The newly freed slaves needed jobs, housing, and education in order to enter society, but the rejection of their new status by southern whites made the transition difficult. In 1895 a former slave named Booker T. Washington emerged as the most influential and prominent black leader and educator of the time. Although his theories and ideas directed many African Americans towards social and economic equality with whites, criticism and opposition rose with increased racism and violence towards blacks.
In the years before Booker T. Washington's freedom began, he was a young boy living on a plantation with his mother. In his autobiography, Up From Slavery, he mentions his early yearn for education saying "I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study in this way would be about the same as getting into paradise." After the abolition of slavery, Washington's family moved to West Virginia and he began to work in salt and coal mines. His stepfather's decision to make him work instead of study disappointed him. It "seemed to cloud my every ambition," Washington stated (Gates, 501). While at work in the coal mine one day he heard about a school for African American students where he could work for his room and board. At that moment he knew nothing would stand in his way of getting to that school, Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute. After many years at Hampton he received a degree and taught as a professor there. Later he discovered his calling in life at the school he founded, Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama. He founded it in the south where there was little opportunity for youth of his race to get a proper education. Because of his work at Tuskegee, Booker T. Washington was invited to speak at the Atlanta Exposition.
Booker T. Washington: "An All American Educator" There are people whose abilities, determination and energy take them far past any limitations life tries to place on them. Booker T. Washington was one of those people. He overcame a childhood of slavery and illiteracy to become the most prominent e...
To serve the cause of human freedom, a person has to be brave, a leader, patient and unselfish. Throughout history many people have fought for what they believed in to gain freedom for their people. One man who did this is Booker T. Washington. Washington was an African American advocate who wan...
Booker T. Washington was born in Virginia in 1856. Even though he was born into slavery, he received a teaching degree from a freedman's school in Hampton, Virginia. In 1881 he founded what is now known as Tuskegee University. Booker T. Washington's major focus was to educate African Americans in ag...
Booker T. Washington Booker Taliaferro Washington was born on April 5,1856 in Franklin County, Virginia. ... Booker had been blessed with an intact family, with one exception of having a white father who never contributed to his life and whose identity Washington never acknowledged. ... Booker T. ... Having a first hand struggle with freedom, social change was a ground floor philosophy to Booker. ...
Booker T. Washington was born a slave on a tobacco farm in Hales Ford, Virginia on April 5, 1856. Booker T. was a great public speaker who mainly spoke about blacks earning the white man's respect rather than keep fighting for freedom. W.E.B. DuBois on the other hand was born in Great Barrington, M...
The Distinctly Different Viewpoints of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. ... Two of these forward-looking men were Booker T. ... Despite this, Booker T. ... Rather, it would take much time and hard work to gain the respect of whites and complete equality, both socially and economically, for all.23 As the foremost champion of black education and equality, Booker T. ...
Parallel to the disagreements of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X during the civil rights movements of the 1960's, African American leaders W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington had different strategies to move towards African American progress. Du Bois illustrates his disagreements towards Wa...
As the nineteenth century approached, America was facing many problems: political, economic, and, arguably the most critical - social. Even after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, African Americans struggled to end the racial division that had conquered the United States for centuries. Two men ...
