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-- From "The Awakening of the Negro" by Booker T. Washington; published in The Atlantic Monthly, September 1896. My earliest recollection is of a small one-room log hut on a large slave plantation in Virginia. After the close of the [American Civil] war, while working in the coal-mines of West Virginia for the support of my mother, I heard in some accidental way of the Hampton Institute. When I learned that it was an institution where a black boy could study, could have a chance to work for his board, and at the same time be taught how to work and to realize the dignity of labor, I resolved to go there. At Hampton I found the opportunity -- in the way of buildings, teachers, and industries provided by the generous -- to get training in the class-room and by practical touch with industrial life, to learn thrift, economy, and push. I was surrounded by an atmosphere of business, Christian influence, and a spirit of self-help that seemed to have awakened every faculty in me, and caused me for the first time to realize what it meant to be a man instead of a piece of property. |
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1856 - Washington is born into slavery on April 5th on the tobacco plantation of James Burroughs in Hale's Ford, Virginia. His mother was a slave named Jane who served as cook in the Burroughs' household. (She became Jane Ferguson in 1867 when she married Washington Ferguson.) Booker's biological father was a white man from a neighboring plantation.
1865 - The Emancipation Proclaimation is read on the grounds of the Burroughs' plantation in Hale's Ford, Virginia. Washington and family migrate to Malden, West Virginia to be with Washington's stepfather. Washington begins working in a salt mine to help support the family.
1872 - At 16 years old, he walks most of the 500 miles to the Hampton Institute in Eastern Virginia. He works as a janitor to support himself while getting his education. There he espouses the philosophies of General Samuel Armstrong, founder of the Hampton Institute, who believed that training in agriculture and industry would give ex-slaves the skills needed for the economic advancement of the South. Armstrong also argued that free blacks did not have the cultural and moral qualities necessary to take part in politics, and that they should not vote. This philosophy made Armstrong's educational program acceptable to the white establishment. Washington understood Armstrong's educational philosophy and recognized its practical advantages in a society wracked by racial violence and terrorism.
1879 - Returns to Hampton Institute as an instructor.
1881 - While working as a house father at Hampton Institute, Washington is appointed principal of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, a secondary school for blacks in Tuskegee, Alabama. He molds the school into a respected institution, based on the philosophy of racial progress through vocational and industrial education.
1895 - Washington delivers the controversial Atlanta Address on Sept. 18th. He calls for interracial cooperation in economic matters while legitimizing social segregation. The speech is enthusiastically received by whites but criticized by many blacks. Bishop Henry McNeal Turner said of the speech: "[Washington] will have to live a long time to undo the harm he has done our [African American] race."
1901 - Washington's autobiography, Up From Slavery, is published. Despite criticism from W.E.B. DuBois, among others, Washington becomes a powerul political force and acknowledged spokesman to whites about black Americans.
1908 - Visits the site of the Burroughs plantation. Gives an historically controversial speech on his recollections of life as a slave.
1909-1914 - Washington becomes a more ardent opponent of racial discrimination. He writes to legislatures in Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana protesting disfranchisement, publicly criticizes the film, "Birth of a Nation," and secretly contributes money to (and raises funds for) legal cases challenging racial discrimination.
1915 - Washington dies on November 14th at age 59. He is buried in Tuskeegee, Alabama.
1956 - The Booker T. Washington Memorial is turned over to the National Parks Service, becoming the Booker T. Washington National Monument.
-- National Parks Service interpretive documents contributed to this biography.
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Web Resources
Relevant Books
To purchase these books from amazon.com, click on the titles.
- Up From Slavery, by Booker T. Washington.
- The Souls of Black Folk, by W.E.B. DuBois.
- George Washington Carver : In His Own Words, by George Washington Carver.
- The Narrative of Sojourner Truth, by Sojourner Truth and Olive Gilbert.
- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass : An American Slave, Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison.
- Africa in America : Slave Acculturation and Resistance in the American South and the British Caribbean, 1736-1831 (Blacks in the New World), by Michael Mullin.
- The Clansman : An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan (The Novel As American Social History), by Dixon Thomas, Jr. and T. D. Clark. This novel was the source for the film, "Birth of a Nation."
- African Presence in the Americas, edited by Carlos Moore, et. al.
- The African Diaspora : African Origins and New World Identities, edited by Isidore Okpewho, et. al.
- African America : Portrait of a People, by Kenneth Estell.
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