Once again we have entered into that time of year when the spotlight shines upon certain individuals in the black community who have been a great influence for African Americans and beyond. Our Blog topic for this week is to research a bit about one of these African Americans. I have been Booker T. Washington. Enjoy if you can.
The year was 1856, April 5. Slavery was running rampant in American society. In the South especially, blacks were forced into submissive slavery by the white plantation owners. Booker Taliaferro Washington was born to into an interracial family. His mother was a black house worker on the Burroughs tobacco plantation in Hale’s Ford Virginia. His father was an unknown white plantation owner supposedly on a nearby farm.
Little Booker may have grown up never seeing his father. Booker worked on the plantation as a boy. He would have to carry the schoolbooks of the Burroughs’ daughter every day. Booker longed to go to school just like the white children. In 1865, when Booker was nine years-old, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Booker was sent away to live with his stepfather in West Virginia (though I am not sure how he was able to know or have a stepfather when he never knew his birth father).
Booker took up work in the local salt mine at four in the morning. He worked so early in the morning so that he would be able to go to school during the rest of the day. After a few years, Booker was hired and cared for as a house worker by a wealthy woman in town. This woman recognized Booker’s potential and encouraged the youth to continue his education and to seek out ways to progress.
At age 16, Booker heard of a new school opening back in Virginia for especially for blacks. This school was the Hampton Institute. He set off as soon as possible, traveling nearly 500 miles, mostly on foot, to get there. Booker had no money but planned to work for the school for his education. Booker was nearly rejected from admission due to his dirty and torn clothes and evident country demeanor.
Booker excelled at the Hampton Institute, and in the years to come he became a teacher and finally principal there. Booker was soon recognized as one of the top black educators in America. Booker later worked to establish the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.
Booker’s work ethic made him a notable figure even in the white society. "There was no period of my life that was devoted to play," Washington once wrote. "From the time that I can remember anything, almost everyday of my life has been occupied in some kind of labor." Booker knew what he wanted and was not afraid to get his hands dirty to achieve that goal.
Booker became active in the early Civil Rights Movement as well. He quickly grew to fame around the country as a well educated and reserved activist. Booker stressed to his followers that the African American community needed to continue to work hard, to get an education, and to show the white society that the blacks were very capable to doing many more things to contribute to the community and world than plow a field or fix a car. Booker wanted to show the whites that blacks could do anything that the whites could.
Booker is probably most famous for his Atlanta Compromise which was a speech to the African Americans to work hard, get an education, and show the whites what they were capable of. Booker T. Washington was kind of like the Martin Luther King of his day. He also teamed up with fellow activist William E. B. Dubois. Dubois was like the Malcolm X of that time though not quite as radical. Together these two men toured the country giving speeches and leading parades and protests to fight the injustices of segregation.
Eventually Washington and Dubois became separated because they could not agree on how to get rid of segregation. Washington was in favor of gradual and conservative means while Dubois wanted more drastic measures to take place. In his last few years however, Booker began to lose his subtlety and political mannerisms. He began to talk in a more aggressive manner and was basically blunt. He was still reserved, just not as much.
Booker T. Washington died on November 14, 1915 due to congested heart failure. The stress of travel and the line of work that he was in caused Booker to have a blood pressure that was twice that of a normal blood pressure. He died at the age of 59.
Booker will always be remembered as a strong individual who refused to let a little hard work get into his way of living his dreams. He was a great man who sought out the freedom of his people in a way that made many, even the whites respect him. He seemed like a pretty cool guy to me.
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