Booker T. Washington

Born into slavery in Virginia on April 5, 1856, Washington was freed when Union troops arrived during the Civil War. He worked his way through Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, then in 1881 became the first leader of the new Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, expanding it into a major center for Black higher education where students built the campus themselves. His Atlanta Address of 1895 brought national attention, and he became the dominant voice in Black politics for a generation, mobilizing church leaders, philanthropists, and presidents around a strategy of economic self-help and education rather than direct challenge to Jim Crow. He dined with Theodore Roosevelt at the White House in 1901, the first time a Black person publicly met the president on equal terms, and his autobiography Up from Slavery became a major text that same year. W. E. B. Du Bois and Northern activists broke with him, founding the NAACP to pursue political and legal battle. He died in Tuskegee on November 14, 1915, and the argument over whether he accommodated too much or maneuvered as best he could has followed him ever since.