Felicia Blackford
Mrs. Caruso
American History
5/4/2012
Booker Taliaferro Washington
Booker Taliaferro Washington was an outstanding black man during the late 1800’s through the early 1900’s. He had quite an intriguing life and background. Through the people and tough circumstances in his life, his character was greatly influenced for the better. These circumstances greatly affected his influence and contributions to society.
“The individual who can do something that the world wants done will, in the end, make his way regardless of his race.” These wise words were spoken by Booker T. Washington, who was born a slave and, soon after, was emancipated. At a young age, he started work to help his poor family. Later on, he worked as a teacher and that later led to the founding and building of Tuskegee University. Washington’s heritage taught him to be a hard worker, he worked hard for his education and it paid off in the end when he was able to support his wife and children.
Born in Franklin County, Virginia on April 5, 1856, he was from a poor slave family. As he was born into a black family, life did not come easily to him. Resulting from his heritage, he learned to work hard and be diligent in everything. His mother was a farmer and she later married another slave named Washington Ferguson, which was where Washington adopted his last name from. Thankfully Christian values were engrained into his mind at a young age during Sunday school. Many of his values and ideals came from his Christian upbringing.
As his family lived in poverty, Washington started working in a salt furnace packing salt and later a coal mine at the age of nine which taught him the value of hard work and perseverance. While working diligen...
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...n Tuskegee Institute, and as he founded the National Negro Business League, Washington had a massive impact on thousands of people throughout his life and his influence continued even after his death.
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Through farming, students were able to both provide meals for themselves, and make enough money to allow them to continue their education at Tuskegee (Washington 67). Washington wanted the students to participate in agricultural and domestic work, along with constructing their own buildings (Washington 71). In doing so, students would not only help benefit the school, but also learn to love their work and discover the new way of working alongside the forces of nature (Washington 72). In this bold experiment, Washington’s theory proved to be true, as students left the Institute with a new found knowledge on construction, drawing, and mechanics of building. Washington had also undertaken a new task, one of making bricks with no money or experience (Washington 73). Brickmaking soon became a key industry at the Tuskegee Institute, even improving race relations. While white southerners had no contact with the Institute, they began to buy their bricks and saw that the education of colored individuals added value and wealth to the community (Washington 74). Washington’s concept of industrial education is seen throughout the expansion of the Tuskegee Institute, as students have even helped build buggies, wagons, and carts (Washington 75). The building of these vehicles helped not only the school, but also the community, as they were used in local markets. In his Autobiography,
When it all comes down to it, one of the greatest intellectual battles U.S. history was the legendary disagreement between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois. This intellectual debate sparked the interest of the Northerners as well as the racist whites that occupied the south. This debate was simply about how the blacks, who just gained freedom from slavery, should exist in America with the white majority. Even though Washington and DuBois stood on opposite sides of the fence they both agreed on one thing, that it was a time for a change in the treatment of African Americans. I chose his topic to write about because I strongly agree with both of the men’s ideas but there is some things about their views that I don’t agree with. Their ideas and views are the things that will be addressed in this essay.
Booker T. Washington was an African American leader who established an African-American college in 1181. Then in 1895 delivered the Atlanta Compromise Speech to an audience of mainly Southerners, but some Northerners were present. In his speech he made a few points. He said, “No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.” Washington believed that the African American race needed to learn first that manual labor was just as important as the work of intellects. He thought that until they learned this they were not worthy of becoming intellects themselves. The color line is thus important in teaching them this lesson. He also said, “It is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercise of these privileges.” His opinion was that one day blacks would deserve to have equal rights with the whites, but right now in 1895 the blacks needed to be...
“It should come as no surprise that Washington’s historical conflict culminated as a struggle between him and DuBois” (Gibson III 66). To say the least, both men were very active in the upbringing of African-Americans, but their differences in displaying out the solution was what brought them apart. Washington wanted the education system to enforce industrial teachings that started at lower economic power, while DuBois had more abstract ideas of equality and voting for African-Americans. Washington was conservative in the matter of African-American inclusion into society, hoping that given enough time and progress, people would learn to accept them, rather than fight for social power like what DuBois stood for. Despite Washington’s program that appealed to White-Americans, he was involved in politics and spoke about the disfranchisement of African-Americans.
“I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.” This quote is by Booker T. Washington. In the book “Up from Slavery” Mr. Washington was a poor African American man who wanted an education. He was able to peruse an education, through hard work and perseverance. Then he wanted to help others also receive an education, by building a school.
The book, Up From Slavery, written by Booker Taliaferro Washington, profoundly touched me when I read it. Washington overcame many obstacles throughout his life. He became perhaps the most prominent black leader of his time. Booker T. Washington belived that African Americans could gain equality by improving their economic situation through education rather than by demanding equal rights.
W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington were two very influential leaders in the black community during the late 19th century, early 20th century. However, they both had different views on improvement of social and economic standing for blacks. Booker T. Washington, an ex-slave, put into practice his educational ideas at Tuskegee, which opened in 1881. Washington stressed patience, manual training, and hard work. He believed that blacks should go to school, learn skills, and work their way up the ladder. Washington also urged blacks to accept racial discrimination for the time being, and once they worked their way up, they would gain the respect of whites and be fully accepted as citizens. W.E.B. Du Bois on the other hand, wanted a more aggressive strategy. He studied at Fisk University in Tennessee and the University of Berlin before he went on to study at Harvard. He then took a low paying research job at the University of Pennsylvania, using a new discipline of sociology which emphasized factual observation in the field to study the condition of blacks. The first study of the effect of urban life on blacks, it cited a wealth of statistics, all suggesting that crime in the ward stemmed not from inborn degeneracy but from the environment in which blacks lived. Change the environment, and people would change too; education was a good way to go about it. The different strategies offered by W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington in dealing with the problems of poverty and discrimination faced by Black Americans were education, developing economic skills, and insisting on things continually such as the right to vote. ...
In 1903 black leader and intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois wrote an essay in his collection The Souls of Black Folk with the title “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others.” Both Washington and Du Bois were leaders of the black community in the 19th and 20th century, even though they both wanted to see the same outcome for black Americans, they disagreed on strategies to help achieve black social and economic progress. History shows that W.E.B Du Bois was correct in racial equality would only be achieved through politics and higher education of the African American youth.
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.
Lewis’s viewpoint is not without it’s truths. The Harlem renaissance was overseen by a number of intellectuals such as Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, and W.E.B. Dubois. Booker T. Washington‘s, a highly influential speaker of the age, words appealed to both Caucasians and African-Americans. Washington forged an interracial bridge of communication through his unique tactics in the quest for equality. He believed in more subtle ways of gaining equality through hard work, cunning, and humility. He stated, “The wisest among my race understands that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremist folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing.”(Salley, 15) With this statement, Washington himself denies that this new awakening in equality and arts could be forced,...
This book was about Booker T Washington who was a slave on a plantation in Virginia until he was nine years old. His autobiography offers readers a look into his life as a young child. Simple pleasures, such as eating with a fork, sleeping in a bed, and wearing comfortable clothing, were unavailable to Washington and his family. His brief glimpses into a schoolhouse were all it took to make him long for a chance to study and learn. Readers will enjoy the straightforward and strong voice Washington uses to tell his story. The book document his childhood as a slave and his efforts to get an education, and he directly credits his education with his later success as a man of action in his community and the nation. Washington details his transition from student to teacher, and outlines his own development as an educator and founder of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. He tells the story of Tuskegee's growth, from classes held in a shantytown to a campus with many new buildings. In the final chapters of, it Washington describes his career as a public speaker and civil rights activist. Washington includes the address he gave at the Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition in 1895, which made him a national figure. He concludes his autobiography with an account of several recognitions he has received for his work, including an honorary degree from Harvard, and two significant visits to Tuskegee, one by President McKinley and another by General Samuel C. Armstrong. During his lifetime, Booker T. Washington was a national leader for the betterment of African Americans in the post-Reconstruction South. He advocated for economic and industrial improvement of Blacks while accommodating Whites on voting rights and social equality.
The United States after the Civil War was still not an entirely safe place for African-Americans, especially in the South. Many of the freedoms other Americans got to enjoy were still largely limited to African-Americans at the time. At the beginning of the 20th Century, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois emerged as black leaders. Their respective visions for African-American society were different however. This paper will argue that Du Bois’s vision for American, although more radical at the time, was essential in the rise of the African-American society and a precursor to the Civil Rights Movement.
Booker Taliaferro Washington was born a slave on April 5, 1856, in Franklin County, Va. His mother, Jane Burroughs, was a plantation cook. His father was an unknown white man. As a child, Booker swept yards and brought water to slaves working in the fields. Freed after the American Civil War, he went with his mother to Malden, W. Va., to join Washington Ferguson, whom she had married during the war.
Booker T. Washington was a young black male born into the shackles of Southern slavery. With the Union victory in the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, Washington’s family and blacks in the United States found hope in a new opportunity, freedom. Washington saw this freedom as an opportunity to pursue a practical education. Through perseverance and good fortunes, Washington was able to attain that education at Hampton National Institute. At Hampton, his experiences and beliefs in industrial education contributed to his successful foundation at the Tuskegee Institute. The institute went on to become the beacon of light for African American education in the South. Booker T. Washington was an influential voice in the African American community following the Civil War. In his autobiography, Up from Slavery, Washington outlines his personal accounts of his life, achievements, and struggles. In the autobiography, Washington fails to address the struggle of blacks during Reconstruction to escape the southern stigma of African Americans only being useful for labor. However, Washington argues that blacks should attain an industrial education that enables them to find employment through meeting the economic needs of the South, obtaining moral character and intelligence, and embracing practical labor. His arguments are supported through his personal accounts as a student at Hampton Institute and as an administrator at the Tuskegee Institute. Washington’s autobiography is a great source of insight into the black education debate following Reconstruction.