Biography Occupation: Educator and civil rights leader Born



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Booker T. Washington

Biography

  • Occupation: Educator and civil rights leader

  • Born: 1856 in Hale's Ford, Virginia

  • Died: November 14, 1915 in Tuskegee, Alabama

  • Best known for: Opening the Tuskegee Institute

Biography:

Where did Booker T. Washington grow up?

Booker T. Washington was born into slavery sometime in 1856. His mother, Jane, and stepfather, Washington, worked on a plantation in Virginia. He had a brother and a sister. They all lived in a small wooden one-room shack where the children slept on the dirt floor. Booker had to start working for his master when he was around five years old.


Booker grew up during the time of the Civil War. Although President Lincoln had freed the slaves with the Emancipation Proclamation, most slaves weren't really free until the war was over. In 1865, when Booker was around nine years old, Union Soldiers arrived at the plantation and told his family that they were free.
Being free was great, but that was only half the battle for African-Americans in the South. Around 4 million slaves were set free and the South was torn apart from the Civil War. There weren't a lot of jobs and former slaves struggled to survive.
It was tough on Booker and his family. Booker's stepfather finally found a job in West Virginia working in the salt mines. The family moved there and Booker and his brother worked in the salt mines, too.
Going to School
Booker worked hard growing up. He learned to read and write at the local grade school for black children, but he had to work too. Booker had heard of a college for black students in Hampton, Virginia called the Hampton Institute. He wanted to attend. In 1872, Booker decided to leave home and travel to Hampton.
The Hampton Institute was 500 miles away, but that didn't stop Booker. He walked much of the 500 miles, working odd jobs along the way and hitching rides when he could. When he arrived, Booker convinced them to let him enroll in the school. He also took on the job as janitor to help pay his way.
Booker was smart and soon graduated from the Hampton Institute. Booker enjoyed school and took a job as a teacher at the Institute. He soon gained the reputation as an excellent teacher.
The Tuskegee Institute
Booker was recruited to open a new school for black students in Tuskegee, Alabama called the Tuskegee Institute. When he arrived in 1881 the school didn't have any buildings or school supplies, but it did have plenty of eager students. At first Booker was the only teacher and he taught class in a church.

Booker spent the rest of his life building the Tuskegee Institute into a major university. At first the school focused on teaching students a trade so they could make a living. This included farming, agriculture, construction, and sewing. The students did a lot of the initial work to get the school going including building the school buildings and growing their own food. Booker was proud of all that he and his students had accomplished.


Civil Rights Leader
As his school grew, Booker would travel around the South to raise funds and gain support for the school. He became famous. Booker also became skilled in speaking and politics. Soon Booker T. Washington became one of the leaders of the civil rights movement.
Legacy
Booker worked hard to improve the lives of African-Americans in the United States. He believed that education, black owned businesses, and hard work were the keys to African-American success. Booker died from heart failure in 1915.

Interesting Facts about Booker T. Washington

  • He was the first African-American man on a U.S. postage stamp.

  • The "T" stands for Taliaferro, a name given to him by his mother.

  • Booker recruited the famous plant scientist, George Washington Carver, to come and teach at his school.

  • His father was a white plantation owner. Booker never met him.

  • He wrote a book about his life called Up From Slavery.

  • He was married three times and had three children. His wives all played important roles at the Tuskegee Institute.

  • He was the first African-American man who was invited to the White House, not counting

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (February 23, 1868 - August 27, 1963) was an American civil rights activist, leader, Pan-Africanist, sociologist, educator, historian, writer, editor, poet, and scholar. He became a naturalized citizen of Ghana in 1963 at the age of 95.

On Feb. 23, 1868, W. E. B. Du Bois was born in Great Barrington, Mass., where he grew up. During his youth he did some newspaper reporting. In 1884 he graduated as valedictorian from high school. He got his bachelor of arts from Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn., in 1888, having spent summers teaching in African American schools in Nashville's rural areas. In 1888 he entered Harvard University as a junior, took a bachelor of arts cum laude in 1890, and was one of six commencement speakers. From 1892 to 1894 he pursued graduate studies in history and economics at the University of Berlin on a Slater Fund fellowship. He served for 2 years as professor of Greek and Latin at Wilberforce University in Ohio.

In 1891 Du Bois got his master of arts and in 1895 his doctorate in history from Harvard. His dissertation, The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870, was published as No. 1 in the Harvard Historical Series. This important work has yet to be surpassed. In 1896 he married Nina Gomer, and they had two children.

In 1896-1897 Du Bois became assistant instructor in sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. There he conducted the pioneering sociological study of an urban community, published as The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (1899). These first two works assured Du Bois's place among America's leading scholars.

Du Bois's life and work were an inseparable mixture of scholarship, protest activity, and polemics. All of his efforts were geared toward gaining equal treatment for black people in a world dominated by whites and toward marshaling and presenting evidence to refute the myths of racial inferiority.

As Racial Activist

In 1905 Du Bois was a founder and general secretary of the Niagara movement, an African American protest group of scholars and professionals. Du Bois founded and edited the Moon (1906) and the Horizon (1907-1910) as organs for the Niagara movement. In 1909 Du Bois was among the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and from 1910 to 1934 served it as director of publicity and research, a member of the board of directors, and editor of the Crisis, its monthly magazine.

In the Crisis, Du Bois directed a constant stream of agitation--often bitter and sarcastic--at white Americans while serving as a source of information and pride to African Americans. The magazine always published young African American writers. Racial protest during the decade following World War I focused on securing anti-lynching legislation. During this period the NAACP was the leading protest organization and Du Bois its leading figure.

In 1934 Du Bois resigned from the NAACP board and from the Crisis because of his new advocacy of an African American nationalist strategy: African American controlled institutions, schools, and economic cooperatives. This approach opposed the NAACP's commitment to integration. However, he returned to the NAACP as director of special research from 1944 to 1948. During this period he was active in placing the grievances of African Americans before the United Nations, serving as a consultant to the UN founding convention (1945) and writing the famous "An Appeal to the World" (1947).

Du Bois was a member of the Socialist party from 1910 to 1912 and always considered himself a Socialist. In 1948 he was cochairman of the Council on African Affairs; in 1949 he attended the New York, Paris, and Moscow peace congresses; in 1950 he served as chairman of the Peace Information Center and ran for the U.S. Senate on the American Labor party ticket in New York. In 1950-1951 Du Bois was tried and acquitted as an agent of a foreign power in one of the most ludicrous actions ever taken by the American government. Du Bois traveled widely throughout Russia and China in 1958-1959 and in 1961 joined the Communist party of the United States. He also took up residence in Ghana, Africa, in 1961.

From 1934 to 1944 Du Bois was chairman of the department of sociology at Atlanta University. In 1940 he founded Phylon, a social science quarterly. Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 (1935), perhaps his most significant historical work, details the role of African Americans in American society, specifically during the Reconstruction period. The book was criticized for its use of Marxist concepts and for its attacks on the racist character of much of American historiography. However, it remains the best single source on its subject.

Black Folk, Then and Now (1939) is an elaboration of the history of black people in Africa and the New World. Color and Democracy: Colonies and Peace (1945) is a brief call for the granting of independence to Africans, and The World and Africa: An Inquiry into the Part Which Africa Has Played in World History (1947; enlarged ed. 1965) is a major work anticipating many later scholarly conclusions regarding the significance and complexity of African history and culture. A trilogy of novels, collectively entitled The Black Flame (1957, 1959, 1961), and a selection of his writings, An ABC of Color (1963), are also worthy.

Du Bois received many honorary degrees, was a fellow and life member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. He was the outstanding African American intellectual of his period in America.



Du Bois died in Ghana on Aug. 27, 1963, on the eve of the civil rights march in Washington, D.C. He was given a state funeral, at which Kwame Nkrumah remarked that he was "a phenomenon."

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