Booker+T.+Washington

Booker T. Washington was born April 5th, 1856 in Franklin County Virginia. Booker T. was born in a slave hut but, after emancipation, moved with his family to Malden, W.Va. Dire. Booker T.'s family lived in poverty, so at the age of 9 Booker T. got his first job  in a salt furnace and later in a coal mine. Booker T. wanted to get his education finished, so he applied at the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Virginia in 1872; he was working as a janitor to help pay the expenses of school. He graduated in 1875 and went back to Malden, for two years he taught children in a day school and adults at night. In 1881 Washington was selected to head a newly established normal school for blacks at Tuskegee. Washington believed that the best interests of black people in the post-Reconstruction era could be realized through education in the crafts and industrial skills. Booker T. spoke on behalf of the blacks living in the South because he was one of the last blacks born into slavery, so people could relate to him and the struggle he goes through and he spoke about the horrible treatment of blacks during slavery. After Booker T.’s death 34 years after he went to Tuskegee it had more than 100 well-equipped buildings, some 1,500 students, a faculty of nearly 200 teaching 38 trades and professions, and an endowment of approximately $2 million, and when he began at Tuskegee they had 2 very small buildings, no equipment, and very little money. Booker T. Washington died on November 14th, 1915and after his death he was known as a very dominate black figure not only for the black community, but in the entire United States he was known as a figure that not only grew up in the struggle of slavery, but some one who showed prosperity and worked really hard to get a decent education.