Black history fact #20

Booker T. Washington (1856 - 1915) was an educator, author, and advisor to Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Taft. Born into slavery, he became one of the most prominent black leaders in the US prior to World War I. In 1881, Washington founded the Tuskegee Institute, a college in Alabama dedicated to moral and industrial education and to training black teachers. His public advice to blacks in the South was to be patient, to accommodate to the Jim Crow system for the time being, to raise their levels of education and job skills, and to take full advantage of whatever opportunities became available. However, in private, he financed several court cases challenging segregation and preached economic self-determination and self-reliance among black Americans.

Thank you Booker T. Washington for pushing us to be self-reliant!