Booker T. Washington (1856-1915)

January 18, 2007 
/ Contributed By: Nana Lawson Bush

Booker T. Washington

Booker T. Washington

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Booker T. Washington is one of the most controversial and dominant figures in African American history. According to his autobiography Up From Slavery (1901), he did not know the exact year, date, and place of his birth or his fatherโ€™s name. Yet, it is widely understood that he was born enslaved on April 5, 1856 in Hale’s Ford, Virginia. His motherโ€™s name was Jane and his father was a white man from a nearby plantation. At the age of nine, Washington was freed from slavery and moved to West Virginia. He had always been known as simply โ€œBookerโ€ until he decided to add the name โ€œWashingtonโ€ after feeling the pressure to have two names when he started grammar school.

At the age of 16, Washington began college at the Hampton Normal and Agriculture Institute in Hampton, Virginia. He also attended Wayland Seminary from 1878 to 1879 before returning to teach at Hampton. As a result of a recommendation from Hampton officials, he became the first principal of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (now Tuskegee University), which opened on July 4, 1881; he remained in this capacity for 34 years until his death in 1915.

Booker T. Washington with members of the Negro Business League in Greensboro, North Carolina, 1910

As the principal of Tuskegee Institute, Washington had the vehicle and platform to practice and espouse his educational philosophy and theory concerning the advancement of African Americans. In 1895 he was invited to speak at the opening of the Cotton States Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia where he advocated that African Americans could attain their constitutional rights through their own economic and moral progression by becoming efficient at practical skills such as farming, carpentry, and masonry rather than pursuing legal and political means for collective advancement. Moreover, he advanced the idea that African Americans should โ€œcompromiseโ€ and acquiesce to segregation, a position which garnered him the title of โ€œThe Great Accommodator.โ€ Although Washington never publicly condemned forced segregation, Jim Crow laws, or lynching, he secretly contributed funds to the legal fight against them. This apparent paradox, among other actions, prompts the ongoing dialogue concerning the use and complexity of his tactics as scholars and other observers continue to wonder: who is the real Booker T. Washington?

Washingtonโ€™s contributions to African American advancement, such as his programs for rural extension work and his help in the development of the National Negro Business League, are numerous and so too are his accolades. He was the first African American to be featured on a United States postal stamp in 1940, and on a coin–the Booker T. Washington Memorial Half Dollar–minted from 1946 to 1951. He received an honorary Master of Arts degree from Harvard University in 1896 and an honorary doctorate from Dartmouth College in 1901. At Tuskegee University there is a monument in his honor called โ€œLifting the Veilโ€ and it reads as follows: โ€œHe lifted the veil of ignorance from his people and pointed the way to progress through education and industry.โ€

The Oaks: Tuskegee Home of Booker T. Washington (Courtesy of the Quintard Taylor Collection)

The Oaks: Tuskegee Home of Booker T. Washington (Courtesy of the Quintard Taylor Collection)

Booker T. Washington led Tuskegee students in building “The Oaks,” his longtime home on the Tuskegee campus.ย  He died at The Oaks on November 14, 1915.ย  He was 59 at the time of his death.

About the Author

Author Profile

Nana Lawson Bush, V, Ph.D. is Chair of Pan African Studies at California State University, Los Angeles, and the former Director of the University California Irvine and Cal State Los Angeles Joint-Doctoral Program in Urban Educational Leadership.

Rooted in Pan-Africanism, Dr. Bush employs a pentecostal-revolutionary pedagogy โ€“ teaching from and to the spirit to foster a liberatory praxis. His approach to teaching is reflected in his research as he aims to contemporaneously disrupt power relations and to build programs, institutions, and states on the best of African philosophies and practices. His publications are numerous and impactful. He has published 4 books, including The Plan: A Guide for Women Raising African American Boys from Conception to College and The Plan Workbook, and 35 academic articles. Most notably, he published, along with his brother, Dr. Edward C. Bush, the first-ever comprehensive theory concerning Black boys and men called African American Male Theory (AAMT). His research foci situate him as the leading expert on the relationship between Black mothers and their sons, the development of Independent Black Institutions (IBIs) in the United States, and the theorization of Black boys and men. Moreover, his research has become the framework and guide for families, programs, and organizations nationwide.

Building on a multigenerational family lineage of service, struggle, and education, Dr. Bush started his first independent Black Saturday school at age 22. He continues to create Black independent educational spaces such as the Genius Project โ€“ a summer STEM academy. He is highly sought after for his expertise in developing rites-of-passage programs, which he has conducted for over 15 years working directly with hundreds of Black boys on manhood development. He co-founded the Akoma Unity Center, a 501c3 nonprofit organization headquartered in San Bernardino, CA, that utilizes an African-centered framework and approach to educate, heal, and transform historically excluded communities.

Dr. Bush views his role as the chair of Pan-African Studies as leading Worldmaking work. He is expanding and reclaiming Pan-African/Black/Africana studies to include the sciences as they are essential to Nation building. To this end, he is the founder of the Martin Delaney-Pan African Studies (MDpas) to Medical School Program, which prepares Cal State LA students for careers in medicine. Students major or minor in Pan-African Studies while completing the prerequisite courses to be eligible to apply to medical and other health professional schools. Moreover, he is the co-founder of the Health Professions Center for all Cal State LA students with the aim to become the national leader in producing culturally diverse and culturally responsive health-career professionals who are homegrown, that is, students from and trained in our local communities.

Nana is a traditional African priest and healer of the Akan priesthood of West Africa. Yet, he draws heavily on the basic teachings of his parents and grandmothers to guide him in his approach to his ministry and treatment of those society renders to be the least of us. He is the quintessential family man as he often states that he practices African spiritual traditions, but family is his religion. He is the father or baba of many children but has 3 biological โ€“ two daughters in medical school and a son who is a high school senior.

Dr. Bush has received numerous awards. Most recently, he received the Outstanding Faculty Award 2018, making him only the second African American in the history of Cal State LA to receive such an honor, and the Pan African Studies Black Community Honors Award 2018.

CITE THIS ENTRY IN APA FORMAT:

Bush, N. (2007, January 18). Booker T. Washington (1856-1915). BlackPast.org. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/washington-booker-t-1856-1915-2/

Source of the Author's Information:

William L. Andrews, ed. Booker T. Washington: Up From Slavery (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1996); Louis R. Harlan, The Booker T. Washington Papers: The Making of a Black Leader New, 1856-1901 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972).

Further Reading