{ Kaley Weber. { Life of Booker Taliaferro Washington Booker was born a slave in Franklin County, Virginia. Some references claim that he was born in.

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Kaley Weber

Booker T. Washington

Adult Educator:

(April, 1856? – November 14, 1915)

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Life of Booker Taliaferro Washington

• Booker was born a slave in Franklin County, Virginia. Some references claim that he was born in April of 1856, but Booker himself wrote, “ I am not sure of the exact place or location of my birth, but… I suspect I must have been born somewhere and at sometime.”

• In 1863 (when he was approximately 7 years old), Union soldiers freed Booker and his mother and they moved to former slave quarter cabins in West Virginia. He worked in the nearby salt mines from 4-9 A.M., went to school for a few hours in the mornings, and returned to the salt mines for another couple of hours in the afternoons.

• When he enrolled in school, he realized he did not know his last name, so he gave the most impressive one he could come up with: Washington. Later he found out that his family name was Taliaferro, which became his middle name.

• At the salt mines he overheard some people talking about Hampton Institute in Virginia, a school for colored people, and decided to find and attend it. He walked for many weeks and arrived to a college examination of being asked to sweep the floor of a classroom in order to gauge his willingness to work.

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Life of Booker Taliaferro Washington

• Washington said that at Hampton he discovered a “new world…. The matter of having meals at regular hours, of eating on a tablecloth, using a napkin, the use of the bathtub and tooth brush, as well as sheets upon the bed were all new to me.”

• He graduated from Hampton in 1875 at the top of his class, and returned to West Virginia to open a colored school. His school was open 24/7, “teaching blacks of all ages.”

• “After two years, he went to Washington, D.C., for a year of study of advanced academics before returning to Hampton to teach.”

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Tuskegee Institute

• In 1881, Johanna Bowen Redgrey and a committee of residents in Tuskegee worked hard to open an African American school in Tuskegee and invited Booker T. Washington down to teach at it.

• This was truly a time when the adults had to choose what they wanted to learn. There had been no earlier precedent set for them to follow. This led to controversy.

• Northern and middle-class African Americans leaned more towards looking for liberal and intellectual classes.

• Southern and lower-class African Americans tended to seek more of a hands-on education in which they could learn a trade.

• Washington believed more in teaching trades, feeling that “One farm bought, one house built, one patient cured by a Negro doctor… will tell more in our favor than all the abstract eloquence that can be summoned to plead our cause.”

• Classes at what would later become known as Tuskegee Institute started on July 4, 1881.

• They were first held in the Methodist church on Zion Hill in Tuskegee, Alabama.

• Washington’s original classroom is reported to have leaked so badly that students took turns holding an umbrella over his head when it rained in order for him to be able to teach.

• During this first year, Washington married his college girlfriend, Fanny Norton Smith. Their daughter, Portia, was born in 1883.

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Tuskegee Institute

• Even after the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, many white adults made no effort to instate the changes that the proclamation called for, especially in the south.

• Therefore, many African Americans took matters into their own hands and built schools, churches, hospitals, settlement houses, and created their own newspapers.

• Many people in the community of Tuskegee were taking part in this active seeking of freedom, and wanted to contribute in any way they could. Some did so through bake sales and potluck suppers, where women donated a dish, and some went door to door asking about people’s thoughts on education and raising awareness and money for the Institute. Within a year they had raised $500 to buy this plantation containing a kitchen, a stable, and a hen house.

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Tuskegee Institute

• Much like Toccoa Falls College when it first got started, Washington made work an essential part of work and staff life on campus. The students learned to do all of the following:

• Harvest trees• Mill their own lumber• Manufacture their own bricks• Make their own clothing, mattresses,

bedding and upholstery• Build their own desks, chairs and

furniture• Grow their own food• Raise and slaughter their own livestock• Perform every type of construction from

design to roofing

• Just as Washington himself had to learn what it meant to live a life free from slavery and make use of all of the now available resources, he tried to instill these principles in his students as well.

• Many trained to become teachers themselves, and ran rural schools throughout the South.

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The college produced the first ever Tuskegee Airmen: an all African-American pursuit squadron (pilots) based in Tuskegee, Alabama, in 1941 as a part of the Air Corps.

From 1932-1972, what is known as the syphilis study (or experiment) took place at the college. The main goal was to discover the effects of untreated syphilis, but the test subjects were told that they were chosen to receive free treatment from the government and were given placebos rather then penicillin.

Tuskegee Institute – significant moments in its history

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Larger ImpactIn 1895, Washington was invited to make one of the opening day speeches at the Cotton States International Exhibition, a commercially sponsored world’s fair in Atlanta, Georgia.

It was the first time in American history that an African American sat, stood and spoke on the same platform with white southern men and women.

His speech became known as the “Atlanta Compromise,” and reminded everyone that African Americans made up one-third of the South’s population.

He also pledged that if they received educational opportunities, African Americans would stand by their country the point of laying down their lives if they needed to, and that there “is no defense or security for any of us except in the highest intelligence and development of all.”

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• Washington built Tuskegee Institute to a staff of about 300 and a student body of about 1500 who were learning more than three dozen trades before he died.

• He was the first African American to be invited to dine at the White House.

• Yet the South refused to accept the Atlanta Compromise and persecution of African Americans was still rampant.

• This discouraged many, and after Washington’s death, many blacks abandoned the struggle of fighting peacefully.

• Washington’s book, Up From Slavery, is still a popular book today though among many different communities.

Areas of impact:

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Booker T. Washington and Adult Education

Washington addressed an issue at hand and worked hard all of his life to see his passions come to life. He had a passion for people to learn.

Washington discovered the learner’s need to know because he grew up in the same environment not knowing even how to use a tooth brush.

He wanted to change the learner’s self-concept, as well as the view the world had of African Americans.

He took the prior experience of the learner and the opportunities that were offered to blacks in the South and made them useful.

Washington worked with a learner’s readiness to learn and motivation to learn, and he coaxed and searched for areas in which he could recruit students to want to develop more.

The learners may not have been exposed to learning thus far in life, but he kept that in mind as well, and helped the learners figure out what their orientation to learning was through many opportunities.

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• Kelley, Robin D.G., and Earl Lewis. "Community: "It Was A Whole Race Trying to Go to School!"" To Make Our World Anew. New York: Oxford UP, 2000. 271-80. Print.

• Unger, Harlow G. "Washington, Booker T. (1856?-1915)." Encyclopedia of American Education. 3rd ed. 2007. Print.

Works Cited