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.

Tuskegee

In 1881 Booker T. Washington founded and became the first principal of the Normal School for Colored Teachers, a vocational school for African Americans during Reconstruction at Tuskegee, Alabama. He would serve as the first president of that institution. It would later become what is now Tuskegee University in Alabama. He went on to become one of America's foremost educators of his time. He also recruited George Washington Carver to teach and conduct research at Tuskegee. Washington married his first wife, Fannie N. Smith, in 1882. She died in 1884. He wed Olivia A. Davidson, his second wife, in 1885. She was a Hampton graduate and the assistant principal of Tuskegee. They had two sons, Booker T. Washington Jr. and Ernest Davidson Washington before she died in 1889. His third marriage took place in 1893 to Margaret James Murray who died in 1925.

Related Topics:
Normal School for Colored Teachers - African Americans - Reconstruction - Tuskegee - Tuskegee University - Alabama - George Washington Carver - 1882 - 1884 - 1885 - 1889 - 1893

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