Born Into Slavery, But He Came Out A Scholar. Booker T.

Washington’s life story was told during the mid to late 1800’s into the early 1900’s, in the time when the Emancipation Proclamation had gone into effect. The Emancipation Proclamation was one major event in history that forever changed our country. All slaves were free and had to go find a new place to live and a new place to work.

Booker T. Washington believed that blacks should not push to attain equal civil and political rights with whites. That it was best to concentrate on improving their economic skills and the quality of their character. The burden of improvement resting squarely on the shoulders of the black man. Eventually they would earn the respect and love of the white man, and civil and political rights would be accrued as a matter of course. This was a very non-threatening and popular idea with a lot of whites.

Booker T Washington was one of the best advocates in his time. Growing up in slavery and out coming the horrifying struggles of the 1870’s was a great effort. Born in the era were black people were like flies he found a determination to succeed and discovered many powers in life.

and got a job as a waiter. Soon after this period of time he got a

Booker T. Washington was the type of African American leader that was fighting for more economic opportunities instead of civil and educational rights. He thought that if African Americans established an economic base they would be able to eventually receive political and social equality, even

W.E.B. DuBois was a very strong advocate for black people being treated equally to white people. He co-founded the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) Which was a very important part of the civil rights movement. The NAACP was “created to work for the abolition of segregation and discrimination in housing, education, employment, voting, and transportation; to oppose racism; and to ensure African Americans their constitutional rights”. He also created a book called “The Souls Of Black Folk” Which made him more popular, with the main Idea of the book being that the “central problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line.” He was a man who fought for equality, where Booker T. Washington, on the other hand, did not. Booker T. Washington thought that black people should in fact have different rights then white people, and that instead of fighting it, black people should just accept it, and focus on economic self-improvement. He also believed that black people should not fight for equal rights, because it would lead to more anti-black violence, such as lynching which is the act of killing someone, most commonly by hanging, by mob action and without legal authority. By these facts you can tell that Washington and

W. E. B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington were both highly intelligent African American men who wrote about the disparities between the lives of whites and blacks in the United States during the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries. Each man saw the way in which his fellow African Americans were being treated by the white majority and used their intelligence and persuasive skills to bring attention to this very serious issue. Both men fought for equality through nonviolent protest and the application of logical argument and reasoning in order to better their lives and those of their social and ethnic brothers. Despite their shared goal of racial and sociological equality, the two men had very different ideas about how equality would be achieved and about what the African American community should or ought to expect in terms of actually obtaining that equality.

Booker T. Washington was known as the premier of black activist. His theory for the African American progression or “racial uplift” was that African American’s would remain without objections and silence themselves regarding the issues of disenfranchisement and social segregation if whites supported the black progression in education, economics, and agriculture.

Booker T. Washington rose up from slavery and illiteracy to become the foremost educator and leader of black Americans at the turn of the century. He was born on April 5, 1856 in Franklin County, Virginia. As a child he worked in the salt mines but always found time for education. Washington constantly dreamed of college but as an African American this dream was nearly impossible. His scrupulous working habits from the mines set him out for college at the Hampton Institute. He graduated in 1876 and became a teacher at a rural school. After 2 years of teaching, he went back to the Hampton Institute and was a “professor” here for 2 more years. His next challenge would be at a new all black college, Tuskegee Institute where he would become president. Under Washington's leadership (1881-1915), Tuskegee Institute became an important force in black education. Washington won a Harvard honorary degree in 1891.

Their respective pasts made for very different futures as well. Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington both played huge roles in the abolitionist movement. However, they did so in strikingly different ways. Douglass acted by speaking to the masses, whereas Washington focused on the younger generation. He started a school to reach out to black children who otherwise would not have gotten to go to the still-segregated schools. It is no challenge to understand how the two men's differing approaches match their personalities. Douglass had a strong, powerful spirit, so he spoke up. Washington, on the other hand, had a gentle attitude. It only made sense for him to do his part by helping the

Washington had many tough decisions in his life that pulled him in every direction and called for him to think every decision through. One of these decisions, and probably the one that was on his mind the most, was the idea of the emancipation of slavery. As it is stated on page 164, Washington told his manager, Lund Washington, that he wanted to abandon slave labor at Mount Vernon and replace it with hired workers. Eventually he began to lose profits so he debated selling his slaves. His heart would not allow for him to split up families, so he was forced to deal with the consequences of using hired laborers. Another

Booker T. Washington was considered one of the shrewdest African American leaders of all time. As one commentator stated, Washington was modest but

Booker T. Washington was born, into slavery, on April 5th, 1856 in Hale’s Ford, Virginia. He was nine years old when his family was emancipated, and they moved to West Virginia. It wasn’t until after he moved that he began to receive an education. He eventually graduated from the Hampton Institute; he worked through the time he was in school in order to pay for his education. He went on to later become the leader of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama – a position he held until the day he died. He made huge contributions in the African-American community, and was one of their strongest leaders in the fight for their rights. He advocated strongly for the right to education and for social issues.

Booker T. Washington was a leader who saw power and success in passiveness and patience. He believed that African Americans would attain their rights in time through hard work, improved education and self-help. His journey from slave to leader was evidence that the black race was highly capable of helping themselves reach a degree of success and he was ultimately convinced

On April 5, 1856, Booker Taliaferro Washington was born into slavery in Hale’s Ford, Virginia on a local plantation. Being born into slavery, it was quite clear that Washington would never amount to much. Knowing this though, did not stop him from dreaming about the many achievements he wanted to accomplish. Washington’s passion to learn is what transformed him into, not a lowly slave, but instead: an educator, a writer and the founder of the Tuskegee Institute. Through these achievements though, Booker T. Washington became above all else, a leader.