Booker Taliaferro Washington

(April 5, 1856 – November 14, 1915) was an American educator, orator, author and leader of the African-Americanslavery as a child, and after working at several menial jobs in West Virginia, earned his way through an education at Hampton Institute and Wayland Seminary. Upon recommendation of Hampton founder Sam Armstrong, as a young man, he was appointed as the first leader of the new Tuskegee Institute, then a teachers' college for blacks. community. He was freed from

Washington believed that education was a crucial key to African American citizens rising within the social and economic structure of the United States. He rose into a nationally prominent role as spokesman and leader for them. Although his non-confrontational approach was criticized by some blacks (notably W.E.B. Du Bois who labeled Washington "the Great Accommodator"), he was successful in building relationships with major philanthropists such as Anna T. Jeanes, Henry Huddleston Rogers, Julius Rosenwald, and the Rockefeller familythe South, as well as to donate to legal challenges to segregation and disfranchisement. who contributed millions of dollars for education at Hampton, Tuskegee and helped pay for hundreds of public schools for black children in