Voices of Freedom: Booker T. Washington
- Jun 11
- 2 min read
Highlighting Juneteenth
Booker T. Washington
(1856-1915)
Educator, Writer
“You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.”
Booker Taliaferro Washington was born into slavery in Hales’ Ford, Virginia. His mother was named Jane; his father was said to have been a white man who lived in the area.
In 1865, he and his mother were freed by Union troops, and joined Jane’s husband, Washington Ferguson, in West Virginia. There, Booker went to school for the first time. When asked for his name, he chose the surname “Washington.”
Young Washington hungered for education. At the age of 16, he walked across Virginia to the Hampton Institute, where he worked as a janitor to pay for his studies, graduating in 1875.
In 1881, the head of the Hampton Institute recommended that Washington be named head of the newly created Tuskegee Normal and Industrial School, a teachers’ college being opened in Alabama. The Tuskegee Institute taught its students both academics and trades, so, on graduation, they could pass on those skills of head and hand to black students. Washington believed strongly in the power of education and economic development to improve the lives of blacks. He felt that direct confrontation with segregationists would be counter-productive, and possibly catastrophic.
Washington’s methodical, bottom-up approach was sharply criticized by W. E. B. DuBois, who had no patience for he termed Washington’s “accommodation” with segregation, and who instead advocated activism under the leadership of what he called the “talented tenth” of the race – perhaps reflecting their very different paths through life. A split developed among blacks between Washington and DuBois, though, as Thomas Sowell has pointed out, the split was more between their followers rather than between the leaders themselves. Time has shown that the approaches of both Washington and DuBois are needed.
Under Washington’s leadership, the Tuskegee Institute thrived. Washington attracted the support of white philanthropists, and formed networks of supports among black professionals and business people. Among other projects, he directed philanthropic money to funding schools for blacks in the South.
Washington’s autobiography, Up From Slavery, was published in 1901, and is still in print.
Among many other honors, Washington received honorary degrees from Harvard and Dartmouth universities. In 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt invited Washington to dine with his family at the White House, an act that was condemned by some white leaders, including William Jennings Bryan, the three-time Democratic Party candidate for president.
Washington died in 1915 from kidney failure brought on by hypertension. His Tuskegee Institute, now Tuskegee University, continues to thrive.
Up From Slavery is available from the Kenosha Public Library.
