Booker T WASHINGTON

Booker T WASHINGTON

Born on April 5, 1856 - Hale's Ford, Virginia, U.S. (Born into slavery, father was his owner – masters having sex with slave mothers was common back then)
Grew up in the family working on the Burroughs farm at the community of Hale’s Ford, Virginia.
Not much is known of his earlier years until 1865, where the end of the civil war ended slavery, and he was set free. (Also known as declaring emancipation)
After the war ended he found himself working in salt mines in West Virginia until a few years later, when he started schooling.
He started off in a school which would later be known as Hampton University. Later on he went to Wayland Seminary, where he was schooled in becoming an instructor.
He later returned back to Hampton to start teaching there himself.
In 1881 he was recommended by Hampton's president Samuel Armstrong to become the first leader of the new “teachers' college” which became Tuskegee University in Alabama, where he served the rest of his life.
In 1895, he became famous for his speech, “Atlanta Address of 1895”
The speech was mainly to northern white citizens, being after the civil war, still where very racist. However, the speech compelled many people instead of allowing the one million immigrants that come each year to take the jobs, instead, to hire the many black people who where living in the south at the time. The outcome of this speech was a huge success.
From this point on, Washington was looked at as a former slave who had become educated and integrated into modern day society.
Later near the end of his life, working with many social figures in the civil rights movement, he was able to build up the two teacher's schools of Hampton and Tuskegee. But the problem remained that many of the teachers that went through here ended up going back to dead end places, in where there were no teaching jobs. To fix this, Washington started up 'matching funds' programs and was able to start up over 5,000 schools in the south for many black...