Booker T. Washington

Booker Taliferro Washington (April 5, 1856 – November 15, 1915) was an African American educator and author. He was born into slavery at the community of Hale's Ford in Franklin County, Virginia. After he and his mother were freed, as a young man he made his way east from West Virginia (where she had obtained work) to obtain schooling at Hampton in eastern Virginia at a school established to train teachers.

Politics

Active in politics, Booker T. Washington was routinely consulted by Congressmen and Presidents about the appointment of African Americans to political positions. He worked and socialized with many white politicians and notables. He argued that self-reliance was the key to improved conditions for African Americans in the U.S and that they could not expect too much having only just been granted emancipation.

Related Topics:
Congressmen - Presidents - Political - White - Politicians - African Americans - Emancipation

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His 1895 "Separate as the Fingers " speech given at the Cotton States and International Exposition, Atlanta, Georgia sparked a controversy wherein he was cast as an accommodationist among those who heeded Frederick Douglass' call to "Agitate, Agitate, Agitate" for social change. A public debate soon began between those such as Washington, who valued the so-called "industrial" education and those who, like W. E. B. DuBois, supported the idea of a "classical" education among African Americans. Both sides sought to define the best means to improve the conditions of the post-antebellum African American community. Washington's advice to African Americans to "compromise" and accept segregation, incensed other activists of the time, such as DuBois, who labeled him "The Great Accommodator". It should be noted, however, that despite not condemning Jim Crow laws and the inhumanity of lynching publicly, Washington privately contributed funds for legal challenges against segregation. Although early in DuBois' career the two were friends and respected each other considerably, their political views diverged to the extent that after Washington's death, DuBois stated "In stern justice, we must lay on the soul of this man a heavy responsibility for the consummation of Negro disfranchisement, the decline of the Negro college and public school, and the firmer establishment of color caste in this land."

Related Topics:
Atlanta, Georgia - Frederick Douglass - W. E. B. DuBois - Antebellum - Segregation - Jim Crow - Lynching

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