“Booker T(aliaferro) Washington: 1856-1915) U.S. educator and black-rights leader. Born into slavery in Franklin County, Virginia, he moved with his family to West Virginia after emancipation. He worked from age 9, then attended (1872-75) and joined the staff of the Hampton (Virginia) Normal and Agricultural Institute. In 1881 he was selected to head the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, a new teacher-training school for blacks, and he successfully transformed it into a thriving institution (later Tuskegee University). He became perhaps the most prominent black leader of his time. His controversial conviction that blacks could best gain equality in the U.S. by improving their economic situation through education rather than by demanding equal rights was termed the Atlanta Compromise. His books include Up from Slavery (1901).”
Excerpted/Adapted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
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