Tuskegee Rhetorical Environment

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

Born a slave on a Virginia farm, Booker Taliaferro Washington (1856-1915) rose to become one of the most influential African-American intellectuals of the late 19th century. He was nine years old when the Civil War ended. He worked hard as a young child and at 16, he left home to attend Hampton Institute. One of the few black high schools in the South, it focused on industrial and agricultural training while maintaining an extremely structured curriculum that stressed discipline and high moral character. Washington thrived in that environment. He eventually went on to head a new school in Tuskegee, Alabama. The Tuskegee Institute was devoted to the training of black teachers, farmers, and skilled workers. Under his

Washington had three jobs before becoming a teacher, which consisted of carrying sacks of grains to a plantation mill, working in a salt mine with his step-father, and he was also a houseboy for Viola Ruffner in 1866. Viola saw the determination of wanting to learn in Booker’s face, in two years she grew to understand him. Eventually she allowed him to attend school for an hour a day during winter. When Booker T. Washington’s became a teacher, he taught African- Americans how to make themselves even more valuable to their community than they were recognized for. The name of the school was Tuskegee University, he was recommended by General Armstrong to run the school. Washington took on that responsibility and help raise money and promote the school, while doing that he reassured whites that the programs within this school would not threaten white supremacy or pose any economic competition to whites.

Washington was one of the greatest African American teachers of his time. Most of Booker T. Washington’s admiration was due to many of his personal achievements. Washington was the leader of the Tuskegee Institute and also began the National Business League. He believed that if blacks could live to maintain financial progress and religious development, they would only be able to do that if they endured the limits of the Jim Crow laws. He also believed that blacks should not have kept their mouths closed, as an alternative they should have

The Tuskegee syphilis experiment was an infamous clinical study conducted between 1932-1972 in Macon Country, Alabama by the U.S Public Health Service. The purpose was to study the natural progression of untreated syphilis in rural African American men who thought they were receiving free health care from the U.S government; about four hundred African American men were denied. The doctors that were involved in this study had a shifted mindset; they were called “racist monsters”; “for the most part, doctors and civil servants simply did their jobs. Some merely followed orders, others worked for the glory of science” (Heller) The men that were used for the study got advantage of, especially those

Booker T. Washington's account of his own perseverence in securing his education is poignantly told in Up From Slavery. Yet with Washington's influence, a shift began from educating students in a liberal arts tradition to an industrial training mode. Unfortunately, by the turn of the century, with the help of the benefactor Samuel Chapman Armstrong, the Hampton-Tuskegee Idea had come to represent the ideological antithesis of the educational and social movement begun by ex-slaves (33). In order for freed slaves to fully participate in a democracy, a classical liberal curriculum was adopted in post-Civil War black, elementary, normal and collegiate schools. As James D. Anderson aptly points out,

Once schools for blacks were established, many of those educational institutions would even become overcrowded. People of color were determined to learn, improve themselves, obtain knowledge, obtain educational equality and improve their quality of life. One of the most

After being emancipated, slaves were granted little to no help from the government. Although the early intentions of the Freedmen’s Bureau included distributing land to freed slaves this did not happen on a grand scale. Document 2 explains that the slaves were “turned loose to the open sky” to fend for themselves. Often times discriminated against in the search for jobs, blacks found themselves not much better off economically than they were before, Document 4 demonstrates the fact that many were forced into tenant farming, which was not much better that their previous status, yet they were no longer anyone’s property even though they still lived on the same land. Black leaders such as Booker T. Washington began to encourage young blacks to get an education. His leaderships at tuskegee emphasized that a vocational education as necessary for social mobility and to earn the respect of whites. This in turn would lead to not only economic equality but also social and political equality.

The Tuskegee Syphilis experiment was an unethical scientific study funded by the US Public Health Service that was performed on African American men in Macon County, Alabama that took place from 1932- 1972. The purpose of this experiment was to study the progress of untreated syphilis in African American men; a total of “600 black men – 399 with syphilis, 201 who did not have the disease.” (U.S. Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee, 2013) The study was conducted under false pretenses, in that the scientist lied to the patients saying they were being treated for “Bad Blood” while being provided a placebo. In 1945 penicillin was discovered to be an adequate treatment for syphilis, and everyone who could get

As Watkins (2001) addressed this issue in his book, he indicated that there were no provisions for educating the newly freed Black people or any preparations for them living in society as a freed person. Black people were uneducated, living in impoverished conditions, and were trained only in agriculture skills. Vocational training was introduced across the southern plain as a means to this problem. It would provide cheap labor in a profitable market. The Hampton Institute was founded to address the societal issues resulting from the abolishment of slavery. Another prominent school established a short while later was the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama that was headed by an appointed Black Principal, Booker T. Washington, in 1881. Washington was a product of training at the Hampton Institute and was recommended

Hampton was more of an industrial type education. It was commonly known as the “Hampton way”. Their focus was on agricultural and mechanical trades. Booker T. Washington came out of Hampton University and founded Tuskegee Institute, which also practice vocational education. Brooker said he used the skills he learned from HU to apply them to the college he founded.

At Tuskegee University, which he founded, he pushed for students to learn tangible crafts, such as industrial and farming skills. He wanted his students to acquire the virtues of perseverance, innovativeness, and frugality so that they could grow as individuals and realize their self-worth. Essentially, these virtues, in addition to economic prosperity, proved to white people in the south that blacks could be valuable members of society.

Booker T. Washington, who founded Tuskegee Institute in 1881, was the one who urged blacks to accept discrimination and push themselves when it comes to hard work because it paid of eventually. I inferred this by the line on page 101, in Up from Slavery, that states, " The sweeping of the reaction-room in the manner that I did it seems to have paved the way for me to get through Hampton." He believed in education, industrial and farming

The Tuskegee Institute became known for providing “industrial education” sometimes referred to as vocational education, such an education would prepare African Americans to exercise the privileges of citizenship

Booker T. Washington was a Virginian born slave who was educated at Hampton Institute. In 1881, Washington was chosen to create a replica of Hampton Institute in Alabama called the Tuskegee Institute. At the Tuskegee Institute, Blacks were trained in occupational skills needed to make a living in the Jim Crow South. Washington encouraged Blacks to accept the Southern racism and unjust laws for now and dedicate their efforts into developing a commercial skill, saving money, purchasing land and working hard. Consequently, in 1895, Washington spoke at the Cotton Exposition in Atlanta and become well known with prominent white and common black supporters. Washington speaks first on the one-third population of American Negroes in the South.