Booker T. Washington: Atlanta Exposition Address

About the Author

Booker Taliaferro Washington was born on a farm near Hale's Ford in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Franklin County, Virginia. While his exact birth date is not clear, most authorities place it on April 5, 1856. Washington spent the first eight years of his childhood as a slave. Following emancipation he moved with his mother, brother, and sister to join his stepfather, who had found employment in the saltworks in Malden, West Virginia. Emancipation did not significantly raise the economic well-being of the family. The young Washington alternated between working in the saltworks and attending school. In 1867 his situation improved dramatically when he took a job in the home of General Lewis Ruffner, one of Malden's wealthiest citizens, serving as houseboy and companion for Viola Ruffner, the general's New England wife. Washington later credited Mrs. Ruffner for much of his early education and especially with preparing him for college.

At age sixteen Washington left home to further his education at Hampton Institute, which allowed impoverished Black students to work at the school to pay the costs of their education. Three years later he graduated as one of its top students. After a short stint as a schoolteacher in Malden, he returned to Hampton to teach and to acquire additional education. During his time as a student and then as a teacher at Hampton, Washington became a protégé of General Samuel C. Armstrong and a student of Armstrong's theory of industrial education. In May 1881 the board of a recently authorized Alabama state normal school for Black students asked Armstrong to recommend a white educator to serve as its principal. Armstrong recommended his prize student. After hesitation and with reluctance, the board accepted Washington to head the school.

When Washington arrived in Tuskegee, he discovered that the school existed only on paper—he literally had to find land, build buildings, and recruit faculty. It is to Washington's credit that in spite of his youth and inexperience, he mastered the political, administrative, and financial skills he needed to create a Black institution in the inhospitable hills of northern Alabama. By the early 1890s Tuskegee had become a success, and Washington was beginning to address the broader political and economic issues that confronted African Americans.

The Atlanta Exposition Address transformed Washington from a southern educator to the most influential and powerful African American in the United States. He consulted with presidents and corporate leaders, and headed a political machine that dispersed funds from white philanthropists and political patronage throughout the Black community. In the early twentieth century opposition to Washington's leadership increased, especially that organized around Du Bois. The founding of the NAACP in 1910 and Du Bois's prominent role in that organization deflected some white support from Washington. During the last years of Washington's life the African American leadership was increasingly divided into pro-Washington and pro–Du Bois/NAACP camps. Nevertheless, at the time of his death in November 1915, Washington was still the most widely known and respected African American leader in the United States.