Davidson, 1885 (died, 1889) married Margaret James Murray, 1893 children: Booker T., Jr., Ernest Davidson, Portia Marshall. Smith, 1882 (died, 1884) married Olivia A.

There, Booker received an introduction to white society, etiquette, and more or less At a Glance …īorn April 5,1856, near Hale ’s Ford, Franklin County, VA died November 14,1915, in Tuskegee, AL son of an enslaved mother and a white father married Fannie N. Young Booker (his only name at that time) was allowed no education and did not even own a pair of shoes until the age of eight, at which time he was often employed at the Burroughses ’ dining table as the operator of a contraption designed to shoo flies away from the food. As Washington later recounted in his famous autobiography, Up From Slavery, his first years were spent in a single-room cabin on Burroughs ’s farm, where he and his siblings were put to work at an early age. The identity of Washington ’s father is not certain, but he was most likely a white man living in the immediate area. Washington was born in the spring of 1856 near Hale ’s Ford, Virginia, the son of a slave named Jane who belonged to James Burroughs and served as cook for the Burroughs family and their slaves. Some critics have indicated that Washington ’s philosophy of economic self-reliance was hopelessly outdated even during his own lifetime, but he was widely regarded as the best-known and most powerful black American from 1895 until his death in 1915.īooker T. He was granted unique power by white political and economic leaders while suffering harsh condemnation during his life -and even after his death -by some blacks who perceived him as little more than a well-educated “ Uncle Tom ” (a negative name given to blacks who appeared overly eager to cooperate with white authority). Washington ’s own life was an outstanding example of his philosophy of deference and self-help. The founder and for many years the president of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, he was an untiring promoter of the virtues of economic independence, thrift, hard work, and patience on the part of black Americans facing the seemingly insurmountable difficulties of survival in a white-ruled society.

Washington was an educator admired by blacks and trusted by both northern and southern whites as a thoughtful, honorable, and articulate spokesperson for African Americans.

Washington emerged in the last decades of the nineteenth century as the most important black leader since the post- Civil War Reconstruction -a period of transition during which the Southern states, then occupied by Northern troops, were reintegrated into the Union. In the annals of African American history, few names are as celebrated or as controversial as that of Booker Taliaferro Washington. Spoke at Cotton States and International Exposition

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