Happy Birthday Booker T. Washington

“Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome” - Booker T. Washington

(Booker T. Washington)

Booker T. Washington was born on April 5th, 1856 in Hale’s Ford, Virginia, USA. He was born into slavery. In 1865 his family moved to West Virginia. As a young man, Washington worked his way through Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute.

(Washington as a young man)

He attended college at Wayland Seminary in Washington D.C. in 1878. In 1881 Washington was recommended to be the 1st leader of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. In July of 1881 the school was opened. Washington believed that by providing needed skills to society, African Americans would play their part, leading to acceptance by Whites.

(Washington (Center Right) with financial backers of the Tuskegee Institute)

In 1882 Washington got married Fannie N. Smith. In 1884 his wife died. In 1885 Washington married Olivia A. Davidson. In 1889 Davidson died.

(Washington’s family)

Washington was seen as a dominant figure within the Black community starting in 1890. In 1893 Washington married Margaret James Murray. Washington’s Atlanta Address of 1895 received national attention. Washington was a supporter of education for freedmen and their descendants in the post-Reconstruction, Jim Crow era South. Washington was criticized by W.E.B. DuBois due to their conflicting interests on how Blacks should get their civil rights. Washington's work on education problems helped him enlist both the moral and substantial financial support of many major white philanthropists. In 1901 Washington published his book Up From Slavery. In 1905 Washington met President Theodore Roosevelt.

(Teddy Roosevelt (Left) and Washington (Right))

In 1906 Washington gave a lecture at Carnegie Hall in New York called the Tuskegee Institute Silver Anniversary Lecture in which he spoke along with great orators of the day including Mark Twain, Joseph Hodges Choate, and Robert Curtis Ogden.

(Washington speaking in 1906)

Washington enlisted his philanthropic network to create matching funds programs to stimulate construction of numerous rural public schools for black children in the South. On November 14th, 1915 Washington died of poor health in Tuskegee, Alabama, USA. He was 59 years old.

(Washington’s funeral)

Today is his 161st birthday and we would all like to say happy birthday and rest in peace Booker T. Washington.

Books by Booker T. Washington

• The Story of My Life and Work (1900)
• Up From Slavery (1901)
• The Story of the Negro: The Rise of the Race from Slavery Vol. 2(1909)
• My Larger Education (1911)
• The Man Farthest Down (1912)