Booker T. Washington

Booker T. Washington

Booker Taliafero Washington (1856-1915) was a visionary, educator, and the most important leader of the African-American community 1890-1915. He is most famous for his autobiography, Up from Slavery, his leadership of black conservative business and religious leaders, his founding of Tuskeegee Instutute, and his emphasis on self-help and education as the cure for poverty and the second class status of blacks in America. In his "Atlanta Compromise" of 1895 he reluctantly accepted Jim Crow, segregation and disfranchisement in return for black freedom in economic, religious and cultural affairs. Washington was highly popular among top white leaders and most blacks, but his approach was attacked after 1907 as too conservative by W.E.E. DuBois and the NAACP.

Life

Born into slavery, Washington grew up without an education because it was illegal for slaves to learn how to read. After the Civil War, he began to attend school, and worked as a janitor at the Hampton Institute in order to pay for his education. He later became an instructor at this school, and in 1891, founded the Tuskegee Institute for blacks. In 1895, he gave the famous Atlanta Compromise speech in which he simultaneously exhorted African Americans to work and white employers to hire them.

In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt invited Washington to a formal dinner at the White House. Many Americans were shocked at this due to Washington's race, and Roosevelt was unable to invite him back for political reasons, although Washington remained as an advisor to Roosevelt.

Bibliography

Primary sources

• Washington, Booker T. The Awakening of the Negro, The Atlantic Monthly, 78 (September, 1896).
• Up from Slavery: An Autobiography (1901).
• Washington, Booker T. The Atlanta Compromise (1895).
• The Booker T. Washington Papers University of Illinois Press online version of complete fourteen volume set of all letters to and from Booker T. Washington.
  • Cumulative Index

Secondary sources

• James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 (1988)
• Mark Bauerlein. Washington, Du Bois, and the Black Future" in Wilson Quarterly (Autumn 2004).
• W. Fitzhugh Brundage, ed Booker T. Washington and Black Progress: Up from Slavery 100 Years Later (2003).
• Louis R. Harlan, Booker T. Washington: The Making of a Black Leader, 1856-1900 (1972) the standard biography, vol 1.
• Louis R. Harlan. 'Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee 1901-1915 (1983), the standard scholarly biography vol 2.
• Louis R. Harlan. Booker T. Washington in Perspective: Essays of Louis R. Harlan (1988).
• Louis R. Harlan. "The Secret Life of Booker T. Washington." Journal of Southern History 37:2 (1971). in JSTOR Documents Booker T. Washington's secret financing and directing of litigation against segregation and disfranchisement.
• Linda O. Mcmurry. George Washington Carver, Scientist and Symbol (1982)
• August Meier. "Toward a Reinterpretation of Booker T. Washington." The Journal of Southern History, 23#2 (May, 1957), pp. 220-227. in JSTOR. Documents Booker T. Washington's secret financing and directing of litigation against segregation and disfranchisement.
• Cary D. Wintz, African American Political Thought, 1890-1930: Washington, Du Bois, Garvey, and Randolph (1996).

External Links

• Booker T. Washington's West Virginia Boyhood
• Template:Gutenberg author
• Up from Slavery, Project Gutenberg edition
• Up from Slavery, Electronic Edition
• Booker T. Washington's 1909 Tour of Virginia on the newly completed Virginian Railway
• Dr. Booker T. Washington papers - comments about Henry Rogers
• National Park Service Booker T. Washington Birthplace
• Legends of Tuskegee
• Booker T. Washington's Gravesite

External links

• The Booker T. Washington papers digital archive, University of Illinois Press searchable index to complete annotated text of all important letters to and from Washington and all his writings.
• Diane Granat, Saving the Rosenwald Schools
• A Criticism of the Atlanta Compromise by W.E.B. Dubois