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To many whites, black people didn't deserve and weren't intellectually "ready" for such freedoms. The South had such a hard time accepting it that Union troops were stationed in southern states who couldn't cooperate. Booker T. Washington is a prime example to southerners who think that blacks can amount to nothing. In my paper I will talk to you about the many accomplishments he has made and the hardships that were attached to his achievements. As always a lot of people tried to pull Booker down. Some were even of the same race as Mr. Washington. But along the way a lot people helped Booker. People who he helped, his family, his community, and others who felt he was just a really great guy. Booker T. Washington was born on April 5, 1856. Like many blacks around this time, he was born into slavery. He was born on a small farm in the Virginia back country. His master was James Burroughs. Mr. Burroughs had a wife name Elizabeth and 13 children. Booker's mother's name was Jane and she had two other children besides Booker. He spent his first nine years of his life in the plantation kitchen. There his mother prepared the master's family and the slaves food. He mainly wore hand me downs from his brother John, and got his first pair of shoes at eight. This was not the life that Booker wanted to have. His mind was set on something bigger and better. When he was a slave one of his choir's was to operate a contraption that swatted away flies from the food at the table. Booker was able to get his first taste of intellectual conversation while swatting flies at the dinner table. He yearned to want to be important just like them. To be able to discuss political and social events with people. He wanted an education. That time came in 1865 during the defeat of the South in the Civil War. A neighboring slave name Washington Furguson married Bookers mother Jane. He then traveled to Malden, West Virginia where he worked in the salt furnaces of Kanawha Salines. Jane and the rest of the family soon joined him that same year. Booker worked along side Ferguson in the salt factories, and later was forced to labor in the local coal mines. Coal mines wasn't what Booker had in mind. As he wrote in his autobiography, "From the time that I can remember having any thoughts about anything, I recall that I had an intense desire to learn to read." Booker got his first classroom education in Malden. He attended the local school for black children a few hours during the day or night while still working full time in the mines. When asked by his first teacher for his name, the ten- year-old replied, "Booker Washington," taking as his last name the first name of his stepfather. Booker, years later added the middle name Taliaferro. Getting the local school for black children wasn't enough for Mr. Washington. One day at the coal mines, Washington overheard discussion over a school for blacks called Hampton Institute. The youngest boy there explained that he was promptly determined to seek a formal education there. Washington's family was very poor though. Booker couldn't even quit the coal mine to go to a local school, let alone Hampton. He worked extra hard. He took a job as a houseboy for the owner of a local coal mine, Mr. Ruffner. Lots of people supported Booker. His employers wife, Mrs. Viola Ruffner always encouraged Booker to keep working and that soon he would reach Hampton. His local community also supported him with some financial aid. With all of this help Booker was able to enroll at Hampton Institute in the fall of 1872. Hampton was located on the famous peninsula between the York and James rivers. Centered in Academic Hall, it was an imposing three-story building completed only the one year before Mr. Washington arrived. To an untraveled and untutored boy like Booker, it was the most beautiful structure imaginable. After having an interview with the assistant principal Mary Mackie in which he was asked to sweep the room, he was enrolled. This was how he got the job as the schools janitor. Washington was paid $10.00 a month. Lots of times he had to wake up at 4:00 a.m. Or he had to clean classrooms late at night. Booker worked so hard that the principal and founder, General Samuel C. Armstrong, of Hampton became interested in him. General Armstrong was so impressed with Booker that he had S. Griffith, a friend of the school. pay Booker's tuition fee of seventy dollars. Despite this aid and the income from his janitorial duties, Booker still struggled constantly to make ends meet. But, he borrowed the books he needed instead of buying them. Teachers helped him out by getting him cloths from a local missionary store. General Armstrong was the most help to Washington though. Armstrong was like a role model to Washington. Booker felt as though Armstrong was one of the most intellectual, interesting, and beautiful people in this world. Booker felt that Armstrong had a great deal of belief in him. Washington graduated in 1875, realizing that his formal training despite it's value, could not match what General Armstrong had given him by precept and example. For three years after his graduation Washington did what Armstrong wanted every Hampton graduate ot do: he became a missionary to his people, returning to Malden to take over the school which had given his first formal education. Before he could do that though, he had to get some money together for his journey. He worked as a waiter in the summer of 1875 at the United States Hotel in Saratoga. He was then reduced to a dish washer after booming his first assignment. Washington finally reached Malden where he took a teaching job. He taught from eight in the morning the children and the adults at night. On Sundays he he also did double duty, teaching Sunday School in the morning at Snow Hill, and a community about two miles distant, and in the afternoon at Malden. After three years at Malden Washington decided to go to Wayland Seminary in Washington for a year of graduation training. This school was different from Hampton because it devoted exclusively to liberal arts. The "deep religious spirit" there, together with the "higher Christian character" of the president, made a deep impression on Washington, but there were something's there that he didn't like. Those things were; lack of moral fiber in which most of the students had their tuition paid for them, and more time was spend on learning Greek or Latin then teaching you about life. Washington's experience in Wayland helped him nurture the teaching that he acquired in Hampton. At the end of his eight months in Washington, Booker was asked and accepted an invitation to get blacks and white votes on moving the capital of West Virginia and three other towns. Washington, for three months, used his persuasive powers on the voters. The state-wide decision was in the end Charleston, a fact in which Washington allowed himself a measure of personal pride. Washington's persuasive powers brought some of his friends to the conclusion that he should practice law. Washington did but then stopped to help Armstrong. Armstrong had asked him to come to Hampton and deliver the coming commencement address. He did and entitled his speech, "The Force That Wins." Armstrong also asked Washington to become a member of his teachers staff. Armstrong was working on a program in he was teaching Native Americans the same type of training he taught African Americans. Washington said yes to that also and the program did work just as successful as it did with African Americans. Over the years Hampton improved germatically. One evening at the end of Washington's second year on the staff at Hampton, General Armstrong in the chapel a letter from Alabama requesting a teacher for a black school. The next morning the General asked Booker if he would take the assignment. Booker thought about it and then said yes. When he arrived in June of 1881, he brought ideas with him, from Hampton, that the whites and blacks of Macon, Alabama were very foreign to. You see lots of schools for blacks had the idea that teaching a New England style of teaching, like the kids in England were taught, to blacks would turn blacks into successful people. Booker had a different idea and style of teaching. His philosophy was that teaching blacks famous composers, arts, and history is necessary, but comes in time. The first thing adult blacks should be taught is a trade. Let them pick a trade in which they would like to work in. Most in those days picked farming. Washington felt it would be more beneficial if blacks were taught agriculture, or what-ever there trade was, so they can make more money on their crops. With teaching blacks these skills they are able to go somewhere in life. They're able to compete right along with the white man. Then once that it established, teacher's should go to work on other subjects. Washington felt as though that was the way to educate black adults. Booker believed that education was defiantly the key to success. Washington literally built Tuskegee from the grown up. He had nothing but a $2,000 grant from the state for salaries and permission to build a training school for black teachers. After a tour of Alabama communities to gauge the regiion's most immediate needs, Booker enrolled the first year's class in a shanty loaned by a local church. The class consist of 30 students. Washington knew there would be a big turn out if he admitted aspirants of all ages and made no requirements as to previous training. He taught a school just like that in Malden. Tuskegee was different though because his ambitions for this new institution was much higher. He wanted his students to feel as though everyday at this school was a sacred day to the negro race. The requirements were; sixteen and older who can read and write. Washington had a "look clean" method for appearance just like Hampton. When there became fifty students he hired another teacher name Olivia A. Davidson, who later became his second wife. She brought an abundance of native intelligence, tact, organizational ability, broader training than him, and a wealth of valuable contacts in the East. At the end of the summer Washington purchased an abandoned plantation with a big house and four buildings for $500.00. By 1895 the enrollment had reached to eight hundred people with the property worth more than $2000,000. By 1895 Tuskegee could justify General Armstrong's description of it as "the best product of Negro enterprise of the century". Washington had become the national spokesman for the Black Race. His first trips to the north and the east established him as a speaker of uncommon ability's , and his reputation grew steadily, particularly n educational circles. In 1884, he addressed four thousand members of the National Education Association in Madison, Wisconsin. By 1888 he had served three terms as the president of the Alabama State Teachers' Association. In 1893 the Outlook, a popular magazine of the day, published his picture along with pictures of Eliot of Harvard, Dwight of Yale, and Potter of Princeton in a feature article on the nation's twenty-eight leading college presidents. He also stamped his name into people's life. He was asked to y the organizers of the Cotton States and International Exposition to deliver an address as a black representative to their industrial fair in Atlanta. The event was of unprecedented significance in the history of postwar southern racial politics. Washington used the opportunity to present in eloquent form his philosophy of harmony through economic cooperation. His appeal was double appreciated at the exposition, as it promised both racial calm and much needed economic vitality in the impoverished South. Washington was given a standing ovation. Washington faced growing black and white liberal oppositions in the Niagara Movement and the NAACP(1909-) demanding civil rights and encouraging protest in response to white aggression such as lynching, disfranchisement, and segregation laws. Washington did try and ague that un fair laws towards blacks and death penalty's were wrong. But his national influence had declined because of the administrations of US Presidents William Howard Tarf and Woodrow Wilson and no one would listen. Even his own race turned against him. The NAACP and W. E. DU Bois disagreed with Washington's dream. They felt that racial equality via the economic independence of blacks was impossible as long as blacks lacked the capacity to protest at the ballot box. The Tuskegee Institute emphasis on small-scale farming and artisan skills was of little use at a time of exploding industrialization. Furthermore there were less and less jobs in the south so blacks migrated north. In conclusion, Booker T. Washington was a remarkable man. He worked really hard in life and has a lot to show for it. He rose up from slavery, created the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, and helped an enormous amount of his students become something in life. Booker had a big heart. Not only did he do something with himself but he came back to his community and his other schools and helped them also. The money he raised was incredible. He is a prime example to anyone who feels as though they cannot do anything with their life. Washington didn't let discrimination, segregation, or money get in the way of him achieving his goals. It's amazing how much he was able to accomplish during the time period that he lived. It it so much easier to get an education now, but still others don't. There were slackers during Booker's time and there are slackers now. I want and I am going to get my education. I want to be able to be like Booker and be able to look back on my life and said that I really did something with it. Washington has proven that anyone can do it. Even if your a slave and can get no poorer. All you have to do is believe in yourself because anything and everything is possible! Bibliography: 1)http://galenet.gale.com/a/acp/netacgi/nph-brs?d=booker+washington&pgl=FT&1&u-/a/acp//db/dma/&r=3& 2)Drinker,FredrickE.,Booker T. Washington:The Master Mind of a Child of Slavery, Greemwppd,1970. 3)Http://docsouth.unc.edu/washington/about.html 4)Jr.Spencer, Samuel R. Booker T. Washington, And the Negro's Place in American Life, Little, Brown and Company.Boston.Toronto,1955 Graham, Shirley., Booker T. Washington,Eight Printing,1964 Word Count: 2473
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