Washington

Booker Taliaferro, an American educator. His mother was a negro slave. As nearly as may be known, he was born in 1858 near Hale Ford, Virginia. When a small lad his mother moved to Malden, West Virginia, where he found work in a salt furnace and in a coal mine. He attended a night school. Having heard of the school at Hampton for negroes he made his way thither in 1872, living on charity and sleeping under sidewalks as he went. The instructors of that institution soon recognized in him a lad of unusual promise and ability. When he reached Hampton the authorities had no room for him, yet hadn't the heart to turn the honest, pleading chap away. He had no means of support. They had practically no money. However they managed to crowd him in in some way. He was given a schoolroom to clean. He swept and dusted so thoroughly that his teacher saw at once that there was something unusual in the fellow. After remaining at Hampton two or three years, earning his way by working in the fields and otherwise, he returned to Malden to his mother's family and opened a school for colored children. In 1879 he was recalled to the institute at Hampton as an instructor.

In 1881, on the receipt of an application for a school from the colored citizens of Tuskegee, Alabama, Washington was sent to do what he could. The state had made a grant of $2,000 a year. A grant of wild land was the only visible sign of an institution. Washington fell to work with energy, rallied students around him, cut down timber, built cabins, opened up fields, and, by virtue of his own industry and genius, practically created a colored college in the midst of pine woods. When it is considered that not an ancestor of the students who came to his school had ever learned to read or write, and that he had practically no models on which to work, the Tuskegee School may be considered one of the most remarkable educational achievements on record. It is pleasant to add that of late sufficient funds have been provided to carry out the founder's ideas.

Mr. Washington himself has proved to possess unusual power as an orator. He has traveled in many parts of the United States and in Europe lecturing on negro education and on educational problems in general. He has been received with respect and listened to with delight. He has written several books. The most noted is Up From Slavery, an autobiographical volume published in 1901.

Booker T. Washington is thoroughly American in all his ideas and ambitions. He believes in giving the negro an industrial as well as an academic education. At the time of writing it is not unjust to say that Booker T. Washington is the most eminent negro in the world.

See Tuskegee; Negro