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Booker T. Washington “He lifted the veil of ignorance from his people and pointed the way to progress through education and industry”. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings M. Cameron. Born April 5, 1856 Full name: Booker Taliaferro (the Plantation owner’s name) Washington
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Booker T. Washington“He lifted the veil of ignorance from his people and pointed the way to progress through education and industry” I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings M. Cameron
Born April 5, 1856 • Full name: Booker Taliaferro (the Plantation owner’s name) Washington • Born into slavery-father was white-farm in southwest Virginia • Freed in 1865 at the end of the Civil War-BW-Age 9—Mom, Sister, Brother, and BW move to WV to join step-dad, whose last name is Washington. • Worked in coal mines and salt furnaces of WV, but then made his way to Hampton University.
In 1881, BW was recommended to become the first leader of the new normal school, which became Tuskegee University in Alabama—he stayed at this school for the rest of his life. • Tuskegee was academic, but put more emphasis on providing students with skills such as carpentry, masonry, etc.
Washington believed that AAs would eventually gain full civil rights by showing themselves to be responsible, reliable American citizens. • BW-Seen as popular spokesperson for AA citizens
BW-represented last generation of black leaders born into slavery, he was a supporter of education for those freedmen who had remained in post-reconstruction, Jim Crow South. • Later in career-BW was criticized by leaders of NAACP, esp. DuBois, who demanded more attention to Civil Rights Protests.
DuBois named BW “The Great Accommodator”—BW replied that confrontation would lead to disaster for outnumbered AA people, and that cooperation was the only way to beat racism in the long run. • BW believed that the best way to overcome racism was for AA to receive the best education possible.
BW did a lot to improve friendship and working relationships between the races. • “In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.”
“To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the Southern white man, who is their next-door neighbor, I would say: ‘Cast down your bucket where you are’— cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded. . . .To those of the white race who look to the incoming of those of foreign birth and strange tongue and habits for the prosperity of the South, were I permitted I would repeat what I say to my own race,“Cast down your bucket where you are.”