Booker T. Washington

Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) was born enslaved on a farm in Virginia and worked in salt furnaces and coal mines in West Virginia before walking much of the way to the Hampton Institute to get an education. In 1881 he founded the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama and built it from a shanty into a major school for Black students, teaching trades alongside letters. His Atlanta speech of 1895, urging Black Americans to accept segregation for the present and earn advancement through work, made him the most influential Black leader of his generation and the most criticized. Up from Slavery, his autobiography of 1901, was translated worldwide.