Booker T. Washington

He married Fannie Smith in 1882 and had one child with her. Fannie died in 1884.

His second wife was Olivia Davidson whom he wed in 1885. She gave birth to two sons before dying in 1889.

He married again in 1893. His third wife Margaret Murray helped rear the children from his previous marriages.

Booker Taliaferro was born to a black slave woman, Jane in Virginia. Nothing else is known about his biological father expect for the fact that he was a white man.

He began working as a young child as children of slaves became slaves by default. He wanted to study but it was illegal at that time for slaves to get educated.

His family was freed in 1865 after the end of the Civil War. He was nine years old at that time.

His mother married a man called Washington Ferguson and the boy officially took the surname of his stepfather and became Booker T. Washington.

He could not go to school even after being freed because of poverty. He worked in salt furnaces as a salt packer to help his family.

He found employment as a school teacher in Malden upon his graduation and attended the Wayland Seminary in Washington, D.C. in 1878.

In 1881, the Alabama legislature approved the building of a new school for the blacks, called the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute. Armstrong recommended Washington to become the head of the school. He held this post for the rest of his life.

Initially classes were held in a shanty old church and Washington personally traveled from place to place promoting the school. The school provided academic as well as practical education in fields like carpentry, farming, printing, etc.

The school prospered under his able leadership and grew to include several well-equipped buildings with more than 1500 students and a faculty of 200 by the time of his death.

He was invited to speak at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, known as the ‘Atlanta Compromise’ in 1895. The speech was widely reported by the newspapers and made him an ideal representative of the African-American community.

The Tuskegee University which he had established in an old dilapidated church building in 1881 today provides education to 3000 students from not just the U.S. but also several other countries. The campus of the university is designated as the Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site.

His autobiography ‘Up from Slavery’ gave a detailed account of the problems faced by blacks during that era and how he overcame the obstacles to succeed in his life. The book became a bestseller and is listed among the Modern Library’s list of the 100 best nonfiction books of the 20th century.